
r?& 



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Glass ._/ 



1638- i888- 



COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES 



AT THE 



Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary 



OF THE 



GATHERING OF THE FIRST CHURCH 
IN DEDHAM, MASS. 



Observed November 18 and 19, 1888. 



DEDHAM: 

Published by the Joint Committee 
of the Two Churches, 

1888. 






4 



] rz7 



UEACON PRESS \ 

THOMAS TODD, PRINTER, 

I SOMERSET ST., BOSTON. 



PRELIMINARY PROCEEDINGS. 



At the annual meeting of the First Parish, held March 19, 
1 888, it was voted that the approaching two hundred and fiftieth 
anniversary of the gathering of the church be suitably observed. 
A committee was appointed to make provision for such an observ- 
ance. The First Congregational Church at their annual meeting, 
held April 18, took similar action. Prompted by a desire to 
unite the two churches in commemorating an event of equal 
interest to both, the committee of the First Parish passed the 
following vote, July 2 : 

" That, in behalf of the First Parish in Dedham, we cordially 
invite the Allin Evangelical Society and the church connected 
therewith to unite with this parish in celebrating the two hundred 
and fiftieth anniversary of the gathering of the church from which 
both of the present churches originated." 

To this invitation the following reply was received : 

" At a meeting of the committee appointed by the First Con- 
gregational Church to arrange for the two hundred and fiftieth 
anniversary of the gathering of the First Church in Dedham, it 
was voted that we heartily accept the invitation of the First Parish 
to unite with them in celebrating our common origin." 

The two committees met for conference at an early day. 
After some deliberation as to plans and methods, it was decided 
to have an address in the First Parish meeting-house in the after- 
noon of the anniversary day, November 19, and that several 
representative speakers be invited to deliver addresses in the 
First Congregational meeting-house in the evening. It was also 
arranged that a social reunion should connect the two services. 



With heart}- unanimity Rev. George E. Ellis, D.D., was chosen 
to dt- liver the address. He subsequently accepted the invitation. 

Although Monday, November 19, was selected as the day for 
the joint celebration of the anniversary, each church early matured 
its plans for an observance of the event in its respective house of 
worship on Sunday, the 18th instant. It was the earnest desire 
of all that these services should be held at different hours of the 
day, that all might be permitted to attend them. A vote was 
passed to that effect. Services were accordingly held in the 
First Congregational meeting-house in the forenoon and in 
the First Parish meeting-house in the afternoon, the pastor of 
each church preaching an historical discourse in his own pulpit. 
At these services each house of worship was crowded with 
members of both parishes, former members of these churches, 
invited guests from abroad, and representatives of other churches 
in Dedham. A choir of forty voices, under the leadership of Mr. 
Arthur W. Thayer, sang at all the services. Mr. Charles J. 
Capen and Mr. William A. Morrell presided at the organ. A 
pleasant feature of the service on Monday evening was the "lining 
off" of the second hymn on the programme, conducted by Mr. 
Thayer and accompanied by stringed instruments. The floral 
decorations in each meeting-house were ample and elegant. 

The programme, as arranged by the joint committee, was 
carried out with very great success and to the apparent gratifica- 
tion of all who attended the exercises. In spite of the rain on 
Monday evening, a large audience gathered in the First Congre- 
gational meeting-house to listen to the eloquent words of the 
speakers. 



COMMITTEES 



GENERAL COMMITTEE. 

First Parish. 
Rev. Seth C. Beach, Chairman. ALFRED Hewins. 

Benjamin Weatherbee. Henry W. Richards. 

Nathaniel Smith. Winslow Warren. 

A. Ward Lamson. 

First Congregational Church. 
Rev. J. B. Seabury. Henry C. Bigelow. 

Calvin Guild. Don Gleason Hill, Secretary. 

Theo. L. Browne.* Elijah Howe, Jr. 

Edward P. Burgess. E. Scott Morse. 

George W. Humphrey. 

* Deceased. 

SPECIAL COMMITTEES. 

ON SPEAKERS. 
Rev. S. C. Beach. Elijah Howe, Jr. 

Rev. J. B. Seabury. E. P. Burgess. 

Alfred Hewins. Calvin Guild. 

Don Gleason Hill. 

ON INVITATIONS. 

For the First Parish. 
Rev. S. C. Beach. Alfred Hewins. 

A. Ward Lamson. 

For the First Congregational Chinch. 
Rev. J. B. Seabury. Elijah Howe, Jr. 

Don Gleason Hill. 

ON FINANCE. 
Winslow Warren. A. Ward Lamson. 

E. P. Burgess. 

ON COLLATION. 
Calvin Guild. C. W. Wolcott. 

H. C. Bigelow. E. S. Morse. 

M. G. Boyd. 



Committee of Ladies on Collation. 



5am UK] I ' 

f, BlRNIB Smi i H. 

Mrs. Am • sa Guild. 



Mf .1 HARLES RUSSEU 

iRING. 

.1 Marsh. 



I II BURDAKIN. 

a. B. Whitman. 
W. C. Weatherbke. 
Harry Cole. 
Russei lCo 
Harris Fishi r. 



i mi: 

E. Louis Neal. 

A. B. Pa 

Edwin I. ISTBRBROOK. 

Edward < '. Paul, 
i. ii. burdett. 
Elmer I . M< >i sb. 



At a meeting of the joint committee, held November 27, it was 
voted to publish t he proceedings of the anniversary, together with 
the sermons of the pastors. Rev. Mr. Seabury, Alfred He wins, 
and Don Gleason Hill constituted the committee. 



[Form of Invitation.] 



1638. Z$i first £§utc0 in ©ebfam. 1888. 



To 

Sir : 

The Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary 

of the Gathering of the First Church in Dedham will be commemorated by the 
First Parish and the First Congregational Church, November iq, 1888. 

United services will be held in the First Parish meeting-house at 3 o'clock, 
and in the First Congregational meeting-house at 7 d 'clock, P. M. 

Addresses will be delivered by Rev. GEO. E. ELLIS, D.D., Rev. HENRY 
M. DEXTER, D.D., and others. Between these services there will be a social 
reunion. You are invited to be present. 

S. C. Beach, J. B. Seabury, 

Alfred Hewins, Elijah Howe, Jr., 

A. W. Lamson, Don Gleason Hill, 

For the First Parish. For the First Congregational Church. 

Dedham, Mass., Nov. 8, 1888. 



Please reply to Don Gleason Hill, Esq., Secretary of Joint Committee. 



SERMON 



BY THE 



REV. JOSEPH B. SEABURY, 



IN THE 



First Congregational Meeting- House, 



AT IO.30 A. M., 



November i8th, i 



II 



THE PATTERN IN THE MOUNT. 

"See that thou make them after their pattern, which hath been 

SHEWED THEE IN THE MOUNT." — Exod. XXV. 40. 

In hearty accord with the spirit of this command are the 
words of our first pastor, Rev. John Allin : — " To walke by 
his rule in building such an house to himselfe." They are 
to be found in the earliest records of the church; they 
are written in Mr. Allin's clear and precise handwriting, 
upon paper now yellow with age, whose edges are ragged 
and soiled. In that devout sentiment he represents his fellow 
Puritans ; — to do all things after the will of God. The pattern 
shown to them in their mount on English native soil was 
"a spiritual house" raised to the glory of God westward, 
"thousands of leagues by sea." To the undimmed sight 
of Moses, the tabernacle stood forth a graphic structure with 
very definite dimensions. On the bold summit of Sinai the 
great Architect gave to the builder his exact plan for the 
tabernacle. With a vision clarified and invigorated by faith, 
our fathers saw, beyond the waves of 3,000 miles, a structure, 
whose timbers were religious liberty, whose foundation was 
truth, whose corner-stone was Christ. Their mountain was a 
regnant conviction of divine law and authority. They knew 
no scepter but God's. No man, be he king or archbishop, 
could be conscience for them. 

This spirit was in their fathers. To trace it up to its 
fountain-head is to rest in the texture of the early Saxon 
mind. It was a stronghold of resistant energy. In him was 
born a love of liberty, coextensive with his sense of loyalty 
and justice. He was constitutionally inhospitable to Romish 
primacy. The Papacy leaned too heavily upon Saxon cre- 
dulity ; it imposed too serious a demand upon Saxon cooper- 
ation. It was too profuse in ceremony; too spectacular in 
vesture. As a dense fog in mid-ocean decoys the sound of 



12 



the whistle and dissuades it from its true direction, so the 
ceremonies of the Church of Rome bewildered the minds of 
the people ; they could not tell whence came the warning 
voice. The Pope met his match in the vigorous assertiveness 
of the English will. Catholicism was far more congenial to 
the people of the continent than of the isles. 

Hope rose when, in the middle of the 14th century, John 
Wyclif appeared, " the Morning Star of the Reformation." In 
him the first potent attack upon the Church of Rome was 
inaugurated. The public anathemas of Gregory VI could not 
silence this voice that God had called to speak. Nor did it 
affect the spread of the pure gospel of Christian liberty, that, 
thirteen years after death, his body was exhumed, burned, and 
the ashes cast into the Swift. Persecution, then so rife, was as 
puerile to stay the movement toward reformation as the breath 
of a child to blow out a fire once fairly kindled in the dry 
grass of the prairie. 

The accession of Henry VIII to the throne brought no 
relief. By his opposition to Luther he won the title of 
" Defender of the Faith " and became the head of the Church 
in England. The people were bold in their denunciation of 
priestly rites and vestments. They cried out for pure worship 
and a pure priesthood. Therefore they were called " Puritans." 

The crowning of Edward VI brought in an auspicious day 
of gladness. Altars were removed, images cast down, candles 
blown out; the preaching of God's Word was restored and the 
Bible put into every church. Then came a sanguinary reac- 
tion, in her whom Tennyson calls " the unhappiest of queens 
and wives and women" — Mary, whose name and reign are 
written in blood. 

Under the iron scepter of Elizabeth the Puritan movement 
gained in power ; it developed successive stages of progress. 
As one has recently said, the " Puritans protested against 
the Papal control and the men who would enforce it. Then 
against Papal doctrines, also. Then against Papal usages. 
Finally, against the Papal theory which made the church sub- 
ordinate to the state and obliged to submit to its behests. 



13 

Liberty, Reform, Purity, Religion, were their conjoined and 
successive words." r There is nothing so inexorable as logic. 
But set logic on fire with God-given convictions and you have 
a Puritan. He passed from under the persecution of Elizabeth 
to the "cunning, covetous, wasteful" reign of James I, as 
from hope depressed to hope in the gulf of despair. Appeal 
went up to the throne for purer worship, a purer liturgy, purer 
ecclesiastics ; out of the depths the people cried unto God to 
justify to them his will ; to avenge the exile or death of 300 
fellow-ministers. The monarch avowed his purpose to make 
the Separatists conform, or " to harry them out of the land." 
Out of that passionate pledge New England sprang. The 
time had come to rise, if not in arms, at least in conscience, 
and denounce by a general movement the accumulated tyran- 
nies of the mother church. 

A certain class believed in " reformation without tarrying." 
They broke away from the church, became Separatists, the Pil- 
grims of Scrooby, of Leyden ; the fathers of Plymouth Rock; 
the men of 1620. They were akin to the " Privye Church in 
London," which described itself as " a poor congregation 
whom God hath separated from the churches of England, 
and from the mingled and false worshiping therein used." 
Others preferred to stay within the lines of the church ; their 
course should be a protest against its abuses and its profanities. 
They were the Independents of the Puritan party, our fathers 
of 1630 and 1638. Before the winter of 1630, 17 vessels had 
crossed the Atlantic bringing more than 1,000 persons. To the 
last "they esteemed it their honor to call the Church of 
England their dear mother, and could not part from their 
native country, where she especially resideth, without much 
sadness of heart and many tears." Although John Cotton 
had preached for twenty years in Boston, Eng., an avowed 
Puritan, had discarded vestments and liturgy, had denied the 
authority of the bishops, although there were forty-five Puritan 
ministers in London, not until they reached these shores did 



1 Dr. Kenzie's address, 250th Anniversary of First Church in Cambridge, p. 34. 



14 

they adopt an independent form of church government and 
worship. It was the natural expression of the new, free life 
into which they had entered. 

I have rapidly traced the current of Puritan feeling and 
motive until it found its way to this land. These men had 
before them one end; — to build after God's pattern. They 
studied that pattern on the rugged Sinai of an unswerving 
conscience. 

Under that mighty Puritan uprising, three hundred years 
ago, our sires were born. They early caught its spirit, felt 
its sway, and finally moved with the current towards the west. 
Picture them as they first enter this wooded region ; Puritan 
pioneers, seeking for "contentment" without resentment; 
men who could easily coalesce under the impulse of great 
motives, reinforced by persecution. The early records say 
they were " come together by divine providence from severall 
parts of England ; few of them known to one another before. 
It was thought meete and agreed upon that all the inhabitants 
that affected church communion or pleased to come should 
meete every 5th day of the weeke, at severall houses, in order 
lovingly to discourse and consult together such questions as 
might further tend to establish a peaceable and comfortable 
civill society and prepare for spirituall communion in a church 
society." ' In these words witness the aim of our fathers ; — 
to rest the arch of their Christian state on the two imposts, 
the one civil, the other religions, liberty. Homogeneous in 
the temper of their thought, they easily entered into binding 
compacts. As Dr. Bacon says : " Our fathers formed a 
church by the simple method of a covenant; it was natural 
that they should use the same method in forming a state." 

In the case of our Dedham fathers the state preceded the 
church, but the spirit of the church was in the state; you 
cannot divorce religious worship from a sense of civil account- 
ability. No sooner had the people covenanted together to 
form a bond of self-government, than they sought for some 



1 Dedham Church Records. 



15 

shelter under which they might gather for the praise of Al- 
mighty God. 

The town was incorporated September 8th, 1636; the 
"invisible and immortal" corporation are the words of an old 
legal definition. ' The church was not organized for ten 
years and two months. During this period the fathers 
gathered for worship under the large trees that covered the 
plain, especially, near the spot where the railroad bridge now 
stands, in the vicinity of Dwight's Brook, now concealed 
beneath the surface of the ground. In winter they assembled 
in the limited structures in which they lived, which then 
dotted the rural acres now covered by the large and more 
comfortable homes of our people. Those were days of 
cautious and yet cordial study of each other's characters, dis- 
positions, qualifications — "the trial of the gifts and spirits of 
men." 

As the winter of 1637-8 abated, two questions came before 
our fathers : " Shall we build a house of worship ? Shall we 
organize a church?" In February, 1638, a committee was 
chosen to frame a meeting-house, " to be in length 36 feet, and 
20 feet in breadth, and between the upper and the nether sill 
in the sides to be 12 feet." It was built partly by joint labor 
of the inhabitants and partly by rate. That little building, 
with its rough pine timbers and its thatched roof, would 
stand within the portion of this house approached by the 
broad aisle, minus the two rear and the two front pews. 
The height of the walls would reach a few inches above the 
large moulding in the galleries. Mr. John Allin proposed to 
the pastor of Watertown that, " seeing divers of their members 
lived with us, and Mr. Carter, one of them, had exercised 
some good time there, and knew the people better than I, that 
therefore it would please their church to dismiss Mr. Carter, 
and such others of their members as they judged meete to 
prepare with us such as should be thought fitt for the laying 
of the foundation of a church society amongst us." 2 The 



1 Worthington's 250th Anniversary Address, page 42. 

2 Dedham Church Records, page 5. 



i6 



Watertown brethren declined to be identified with a church 
that was not already " settled." The Dedham people there- 
fore proceeded to found a church among themselves. Then 
was instituted that system of church government and wor- 
ship through which shines the noble and devout character 
of our fathers. They began, interspersed, and ended, all 
their deliberations with prayer. By such means they gained 
access to the mind of Christ, and endeavored to build after 
the pattern shown to them in the mount. How simple are the 
steps ! John Allin presented the case to Ralph Wheelocke, 
praying the Lord to open to each other their spiritual con- 
dition and unite their hearts. They two chose a third, and 
they a fourth, until the required number of ten was reached. 
This was followed by " a day of solemn fasting and prayer, to 
humble and prepare our hearts to draw nigh to the Lord and 
seek direction from him." Another day was filled with the 
examination into the spiritual condition by the brethren in 
turn, "the manner of our conversion to God," and the manner 
of God's dealing with them, " with present apprehension of 
God's love or want thereof." In looking out suitable material 
for the foundation of the church, "we should respect the 
soundness of grace above all things." 

Under a pledge to be "faithful and impartial," each one 
"scanned the rest" and was scanned in turn, all submitting 
themselves "to the judgment of the whole company to be 
taken, or left, or ordered, by the rule of the gospell, or to the 
call and voice of God." ' 

As a result, six were taken, but four were left. Concerning 
one of them, there were some suspicions, " which the company 
could not at present clear up." Another, " by his rash car- 
riage and speeches, savored of self-confidence." A third was 
" too much addicted to the world,"of whom a subsequent record 
is made — "when we desired to know the mind of God about 
him, the Lord left him without any provocation thereto, unto 
such a distempered passionate flying out upon one of the 



1 < liurch Records, page 6. 



17 

company, whom the Lord had used to follow home some 
things close upon him, . . . that we gave him wholly over." 
A fourth " was so dark and unsatisfying in respect of the work 
of grace," that he was set aside. One of these, Edward Allin, 
was subsequently restored. He, with John Hunting, who had 
that summer come from England, made up the number of 
eight. 

Then followed numerous meetings for discussing as to how 
they should proceed, what is the right constitution of the 
church, what the nature of the covenant. Delay seemed 
inevitable and yet perplexing. Rev. John Phillips, of Water- 
town, declined to accept an invitation to cooperate with the 
brethren here in building and shepherding a church. About 
the beginning of October, 1638, " we came to resolutions to 
cast ourselves upon the Lord, and venture, with such helpes 
as he should afford, rather than to delay so great a work any 
longer." 

Accordingly these eight persons — "John Allin, Ralph 
Wheelocke, Edward Allin, John Luson, Eleaser Lusher, John 
Frayry, John Hunting, and Robert Hindsdall — were sett apart 
by the Lord for this service." Each stated his belief upon " all 
the heads of Christian religion; " all testified how they found 
their hearts inclined by the Lord to the love of one another; 
"one beginning to speake of one point of religion; every one 
in order spoke their thoughts of the same, . . . wherein we 
found a sweete consent of judgment." 

There was an impression current that the "General Court 
had ordained that no churches should be gathered without the 
advice of other churches." Thinking this might be " prejudi- 
ciall to the liberty of God's people, and some seeds of usurpa- 
tion upon liberties of the gospell," they requested the 
Governor to inform them of the true intent of the law. He 
replied, that the law in no way intended to abridge the liberty 
of gathering into church fellowship ; but the scope was this, 
that "if any people of unsound judgment or erroneous ways 
should privately set up churches amongst them, the common- 
wealth would not so approve them as to communicate freedom, 



i8 

. . . nor protect them in their government, if they saw their 
way was dangerous to the publike peace." The record adds, 
" which answer gave us satisfaction in that scruple." 

In simple congregational order, letters were sent out to the 
churches of Boston, Roxbury, and other places. The invi- 
tation is full of devout and fraternal fervor, opening with this 
sentence : " Reverend and dearely beloved in the Lord Jesus, 
we, whos names are subscribed, desyring (in the feare of the 
Lord and through the mercy of our God) to gather together 
into the holy fellowship of a church, that we may obtaine fur- 
ther communion with the Lord, and with the holy assemblies 
of his saints about us, . . . doe humbly desyre your presence, 
advice, and spirituall helpfulness therein, according to God." ' 
The letter expresses the hope that " neither the season of 
the yeare nor the rawnes of the new plantation shall frustrate 
our expectation of your desyred presence and counsell." 
They sign themselves, " With all due respects and tender love, 
we commend you to the Lord Jesus and rest." An unction 
of prayer was concentrated on the auspicious event. When 
all were assembled under their thatched roof, on that chill 
November day, Ralph Wheelocke began with solemn prayer 
and confession of sin. John Allin followed with prayer, " as 
the Lord should guide and assist." Then he spoke to the 
assembly from Rev. i : 20 : "And the seven candlesticks which 
thou sawest are the seven churches." Then follows another 
prayer ; all assent to the declaration of faith and testify to the 
working of the grace of God in their hearts. Mr. Allin, in his 
incisive discourse, describes the office of the church and the 
claims of the covenant: their wish to enter into "loving and 
brotherly communion " with all the churches. With a deep 
desire that the work may be accomplished according to the 
rule of the gospel, he tells the council they have been called 
together that, with their approval, " the Lord shall be pleased 
to sett up an house to himselfe in this place." They stood 
before the council, imploring it to faithfully and plainly declare 



1 Church Records, page 10. 



19 

unto them whatever they saw, that might justly hinder their 
purpose in joining together in the covenant of the Lord, and 
to live in spiritual communion. "We should be willing to 
attend to the word and rule of the Lord Jesus, and accordingly 
order ourselves." Mr. Mather, teacher of the church in Dor- 
chester, said " that they had nothing to declare from the Lord 
that should move us to desist from our purpose, only they 
gave us some loving exhortation in respect of some passages 
professed by some of the brethren." The questions related 
to knowledge of the integrity of each one, and fellowship, 
but these matters had been " considered and propounded " 
and settled, before the council was called. 

Another prayer follows ; (these men were a " pattern of 
prayer" as truly as of "good works.") The eight men of 
faith and of God agreed to the covenant, which was publicly 
read. 

And again Mr. Allin prayed " that the Lord would accept 
our desyres and purposes in Christ, confirme us therein, and 
seale to our covenant and avouch us for his people." Then the 
elders extended the right hand of fellowship in true, loving 
acceptance of the new church into communion with them in 
the Lord. Mr. Allin dismissed the assembly with a blessing. 

Thus in the simplest possible manner this church was 
formed. By such methods, Christ's kingdom obtained in 
New England " a place prepared of God." As Mr. Robert C. 
Winthrop says : " No other system of church government 
than Congregationalism could have been successful in New 
England in that day; no other system could have done so 
much for religion ; no other system could have done so much 
for liberty, religious and civil." " The meeting-house, the 
school-house, and the training field," said John Adams, " are 
the scenes where New England men were formed." ' Was 
not the judgment of our fathers clear and strong in putting 
the meeting-house before the school-house ? Yes, for within 
it should be formulated the idea of freedom and independence 
and intelligence. 



1 Address at Plymouth, 250th Anniversary of Landing of Pilgrims, page 105. 



20 

" For the cause of religious freedom, no other security could 
have compared with the independent system of church govern- 
ment. Independent churches prepared the way for inde- 
pendent states and an independent nation." 

There are few things in our history more sublime than 
these eight men, sitting on the hard benches in that little 
meeting-house across the way, and, with uplifted hands, 
accepting that devout covenant, which has from time to time 
been renewed, as in 1738, again in 1838, and finally, November 
4th, 1888. By such acts of loyalty to the "Lord Jesus, who 
hath bought us with his blood," may this church hallow many 
a fiftieth year. Well might Mr. Winthrop say of this covenant 
as he has recently said of another, closely resembling it in 
spirit : " That old covenant is one under which any man 
might be willing to live and die." 

The church was now " sett up as a spiritual house to the 
Lord Jesus." Accessions to the church were made under the 
same rigid system of inquiry as held in the formation of the 
church. The manner of proceeding was this : After any one 
had expressed a desire to enter the fold, " he was desired to 
declare the workings of God in his heart, and what grounds he 
could declare of his right unto the ordinances, at least as far 
as by the breathings of his soul after Christ," the church 
might see clearly reasons for accepting him. Here follow 
some touching fragments of experience. The first to be 
admitted is Margaret Allin, wife of John Allin, "who gave a 
clear and plentiful testimony of the gracious dealings of the 
Lord with her;" then came Henry Phillips, "a tender and 
broken-hearted Christian ; " followed by the wife of Joseph 
Kingsbury, "a soul full of feares and temptations, but truly 
breathing after Christ." 

So passed the winter of 1638-9. Members were gradually 
added of the most conscientious and submissive material for 
church growth. However rigid they may have been in 
analyzing Christian character and motive, they found them 
signally responsive. 

One important matter remained to be settled. It was not 



21 

easy to decide what method should be adopted in settling a 
pastor. With prayerful fidelity to conscience, the members 
of the church began to consider the twofold question, " Shall 
we have a teacher and a pastor, or combine both offices in 
one ? " It was arranged that Mr. Allin should be absent while 
the church considered the question and his relation to it. 
He was subsequently called in and asked his opinion. He 
sincerely acknowledged their love, and yet thought himself 
unfit for any office ; and yet he was ready to attend upon the 
Lord and service of the church, in whatever sphere He might 
select. But if he should express his opinion, he thought his 
gift to lie more aptly in the work of a pastor, and so it was 
decided. Parallel with this was the inquiry, " Is it not requi- 
site that we have a ruling elder?" The question was frater- 
nally submitted to the advice of the brethren in Roxbury and 
Dorchester, "whether to venture upon the choice of a ruler, or 
stay till God furnished the church better." The brethren 
from these churches assured them there were men here, any 
of whom would do for the office. Accordingly, John Hunting 
was fixed upon. It required a good deal of argument to per- 
suade this man of " much modesty, and feare, and trembling, 
and many tears," that he was the man for so high a position. 
But they prevailed. 

The 24th of April, 1639, was chosen as the day of ordi- 
nation. The first hours were filled with discussions over the 
nature of ordination " as an act of church power." Had they 
the right to set apart any to church office in the name of 
Christ ? True to their unerring purpose to follow the pattern 
of the gospel, it is recorded that such was the custom in all 
similar cases among the apostles, " who were church members 
and exercised the power of the church therein," nor was any 
challenge ever offered to such a prerogative. The day was 
appointed ; the drum-beat sounded out its call to assemble. 
Pastors and delegates from other churches came together, and 
when all were gathered beneath the thatched roof, "our 
brother Hunting began with solemn prayer, wherein the 
Lord assisted." Then the pastor-elect exercised upon 1 Cor. 



22 

iii :g, treating in the forenoon upon the first part of the verse, 
and in the afternoon upon the latter part. He reminded his 
hearers of God's providence in directing attention to "our 
brother 1 [unting for the office of a ruler in this house of God." 
Then he addressed himself to the elder-elect, told him how 
the eye of the people had been directed towards him, and how 
fully and freely the church now in the name of Christ had 
called him. Then the elder-elect speaks, telling his experience 
of the leading of God's spirit, and how he gave himself up to 
His will in this matter. Mr. Allin then announced that those 
chosen for the purpose would set him apart to his work- 
These three persons, John Allin, Ralph Wheelocke, and 
Edward Allin, came into the seat where John Hunting sat, 
and put their hands upon his head. "With solemn prayer to 
God and the Lord Jesus, King of Saints," and a devout 
charge "to be faithful and diligent," Mr. Allin says : "In the 
name of the Lord Jesus, and by his power committed to his 
church, we doe ordaine thee, John Hunting, unto the office of 
a ruling elder in this church of Christ." The ordination of 
the pastor followed that of the elder. John Hunting, with 
the aid of the other two brethren, " in the name of Christ and 
his church," laid their hands on the head of John Allin, and 
ordained him to the office of pastor. All the proceedings 
" were carried by him with that gravity and comely order, 
without hesitation and with such effectual and apt prayers and 
exhortations to the church and pastor, as gave very sweete 
testimony to all the church." Then the elders present, and 
Mr. Whiting, pastor of the church in Lynn, gave the right 
hand of fellowship. The next Sabbath the pastor charged 
his people to look after the ordinances of the church, which 
Christ now gave them to enjoy, viz., the seals of the covenant. 
He exhorted the parents to bring forward their children for 
baptism. On the next Lord's day both sacraments were 
impressively administered. The sacrament of the Lord's 
Supper, in which the pastor followed exactly the pattern given 
by Christ to his disciples, "was very sweete unto all, especially 
to one sister who had long been full of doubting, but who was 
much confirmed." 



23 

Thus apostolic history repeats itself. The Puritans' search 
for " the rule of the Lord Jesus " took them back to the days 
when John and Peter and Paul planted churches and con- 
firmed them. Like their simple dress and manners, like the 
unadorned structures in which the fathers dwelt or wor- 
shiped, was the simple framework of their spiritual house. 
The more thoroughly we analyze their motives in coming to 
this country, the more rational and inevitable does this method 
of ordination appear. It sprang into being out of the condi- 
tions into which they came, with abhorrence of ceremony and 
vestment on the one hand, and on the other, a heavenward out- 
reach toward liberty to worship God without fear or restraint. 
Let us not say the church planted here was an extempor- 
aneous impulse or a temporary shelter for their faith ; it was 
the consummate expression of centuries of conviction, the ripe 
fruit of prayer. 

The Puritan ecclesiastic order gives to its supporters the 
right of equal and cooperative control in church affairs : it 
honors private judgment, it serves individual conscience, 
it awaits new light to break from God's Word, and is not 
alarmed at new statements of old beliefs. The simple manner 
of gathering the first church in Dedham is a potent argument 
for the prerogative of Christian liberty. Nothing else could 
have taken its place, no other form could have meant so much 
for them and for us. 

Our fathers were men of one book. They were loyal to the 
spirit of Scripture more than to its letter. They extracted 
the kernel of the gospel from the book, but did not glorify the 
shell. " Shielded and helmed and weaponed " with the Script- 
ures, they were always full armored. There was no retreat 
from Wyclif to Allin. Their Bible was an open Bible, a Bible 
upon which fell tears of devotion and importunity. They 
came with no limited charter of human rights, but an eternal 
charter of divine rights. When they built their church, they 
did not seal up the Scriptures in a metallic box and put them 
under the corner-stone for remote generations to recover, 
but built them into every part of the structure. Let no one 



call their fealty to the Bible blind, or narrow, or servile ; it 
was intense, but it was intelligent; it was resolute, but it 
was liberal. Glance at the words which introduce the earliest 
records of this church : " A brief history of the church of 
Christ" is there projected "to make use of in any case that 
may occur wherein light may be fettched from any examples 
of things past, no way intending hereby to bind the conscience 
of any to walke by this patterne or to approve of the practice 
of the church further than it may appear to be according to 
the rule of the gospell." ' 

Mighty as our fathers were in their convictions, they gave 
to others the same right of private interpretation which they 
claimed for themselves. 

The Bible used in their services was undoubtedly the 
Genevan version. Their antipathy to the personal character 
and oppressive spirit of King James forbade them to use " the 
authorized version." Their sympathy with the exiles in 
Geneva for conscience' sake and the hold the Genevan version 
had on the public heart made it dear to them. 

The Bible was expounded from Sabbath to Sabbath, but it 
was not publicly read in any meeting-house in New England 
prior to 1699. In that year the Brattle Street Church intro- 
duced into its service the simple reading of the Bible. The 
church in South Reading, formed in 1645, received, 130 years 
later, the gift of a Bible, for which the parish passed a vote of 
thanks, with a resolution to have it read upon the Sabbath for 
the future. 

From the ecclesiastical statistics in New England I make 
a condensed statement of the reasons for not publicly reading 
the Word of God: (1) It was not a necessary part of divine 
worship. (2) The Holy Scriptures were hard to be understood 
and should therefore be interpreted when read. (3) It was 
not the Word read, but the Word preached, to which the boon 
of conversion and salvation of man belonged, and by which 
souls were ordinarily won to Christ ; "such a result from the 
reading would be considered extraordinary and miraculous." 

'Church Records, pa, 



25 

The Bible began to be regularly read from the sacred desk in 
this place in 1785. Mrs. Catherina Barnard presented a copy 
to the church at that time on condition that it be publicly 
read. 1 It was studied at home and expounded with singular 
faithfulness and pungency on Sunday. 

A quaint writer contemporaneous with the founders of the 
church speaks of them in these words : " They gather into a 
church at their first settling, for indeed, as this was their 
chief errand, so was it the first thing they ordinarily minded 
to pitch their tabernacle near the Lord's tent. To this end 
they called to the office of pastor the reverend, humble, and 
heavenly-minded Mr. John Allin, a man of very courteous 
behavior, full of sweet Christian love towards all, and with 
much meekness of spirit, contending earnestly for the faith 
and peace of Christ's churches." 2 

It is a singular coincidence that, as we have been approach- 
ing our fifth jubilee anniversary, new light has fallen on the 
career of John Allin. No less than three persons of that 
name, each presenting claims to have been our first pastor, 
are known to have lived in England during the period we cel- 
ebrate. I will not detain you to show which he is not, but 
briefly state which he is. A gentleman expert in antiquarian 
researches recently discovered a signature in the archives of 
Caius College, Cambridge, England. It was the signature of 
a youth of sixteen years upon receiving his matriculation 
papers as a student of the college. This signature resembles 
in every essential condition of agreement that found repeatedly 
in the earliest records of our church and under all other docu- 
ments, an enlarged copy of which you have before you. 
Twenty and thirty years of time separate them, but each 
bears the marked individuality of an unique character. The 
stranger at Cambridge today will find the old buildings of 
16 1 2 replaced by new and more imposing edifices. Founded 
by a physician, Caius College was early called the medical 

1 Dr. Lamson's Historical Discourses, page 63. 

2 Wonder-working Providence and Sion's Saviour, page 125. 



26 

college. The founder's tomb is the stately ornament of the 
modern chapel, in whose painted window is a series delineating 
the miracles of healing. But the shock of time has not 
crumbled three landmarks of the distinguished college — three 
gates called the gate of Humility, the gate of Virtue, and the 
gate of Honor. The noble career of Allin in this town shows 
to us that he was accustomed to pass under those gates with- 
out shame or dismay. 

The full signature of John Allin includes the place of his res- 
idence, Colby, close to Norwich, in Norfolk. The antiquarian 
expert reproduces for us the identity of that family circle : the 
father, Reginald, and the mother, Margerie, the fifteen children, 
and John the eighth. His baptism is recorded May 22, 1597. 
His father was a well-to-do farmer, who provided amply for the 
education of his son John, the only one of the family who 
went to the university. In the father's will he directs that 
his son " John shall receive eight score pounds, to be paid as 
follows : within one month after he shall attain the age of 
twenty-two, four score pounds, and within one year next fol- 
lowing, the other four." He was married in Wrentham, Eng- 
land, Oct. 22, 1622, to Margaret Morse. His son bearing the 
same name was baptized there Oct. 24, 1623. He came to 
this country in 1637, and soon settled in "Contentment." It 
seems most probable that he did not receive orders in England 
before coming here, but was a public lecturer upon religious 
subjects, a position which Queen Elizabeth subsequently abol- 
ished. This was a Puritan office, designed to furnish preach- 
ers where there was no proper ministry. The appointment 
lasted three years. Had he been ordained to the ministry 
before coming to this country, would he not have been ac- 
cepted by his brethren here without ordination ? His service 
to this church was that of "a cheerful, grave, and gracious 
soldier of Christ," a man of thorough mental discipline, of an 
aggressive spirit, of a reverential and prayerful temper, of 
love for his fellow men as warm and sympathetic as it was 
discriminating and judicious. 

" Allin, tliou art by Christ's free spirit led 
To warre for him in wilderness awhile." 



27 

For thirty-two years he labored here with unsparing assid- 
uity. He was chosen to preach the opening sermon before 
the Synod which met at Cambridge, Sept. 15, 1648, was an 
overseer of Harvard College, and was appointed with Cotton 
and others to consider certain questions propounded by the Gen- 
eral Court. One of his best productions was a paper written 
jointly with Rev. Thomas Shepard, of Cambridge, " a defense 
of the answer made unto the Nine Questions, etc." His pen 
was strong, assertive, lucid, but not abundant. 

A beautiful tribute to his memory is the address to the 
" courteous reader," which precedes the two published ser- 
mons of Mr. Allin, the last two he preached to his people 
before his death. Listen to the words of those that loved 
him : " He was a man that needs not our testimony for his 
commendation ; his work shall praise him in the gate ; a man 
so well approved in the churches of Christ that he was 
known to be a faithful laborer in the house of the Lord, a 
wise builder in his house. He was a burning and a shining 
light, and we that were of his flock a long season rejoiced 
in his light, even from the first gathering of the church of 
Christ in Dedham." 

Those earnest discourses are the surest index to Mr. Allin's 
religious belief. How they glow with adoration of Jesus 
Christ ! Saturated with Scripture, they unfold the deep 
things of revelation. They exalt the cross; they worship 
Christ. The preacher exclaims : " The Lord Jesus Christ, 
the God of Glory, the Redeemer and Saviour of his people," 
and a little farther on we hear him saying, " Oh, what a blessed 
seal is that wherein the Lord offers a crucified Christ to us ! " 
Well do his people say that these words are fitted by Provi- 
dence to be his farewell. 

Our fathers were men that stood on the mount and com- 
muned with God. He unfolded to them his divine pattern of 
a church in a land to be subdued, in an inhospitable climate* 
whose reputation had reached the home country. Under the 
sense of God's authority they toiled, they planted, they prayed. 



28 

By such fidelity they handed over to their children the work 
which they simply began, bidding them carry it on after 
God's pattern. Oh ! sons and daughters of the Puritans, de- 
voutly cherish the memory of the fathers. Pass with them 
under the gate of Humility and of Virtu:, and finally we shall 
come to the gate of Honor. Revere the Book that made them 
great ; remember the Sabbath they kept holy ; worship in 
church and family the Lord Whom they worshiped. 

On the banks of the Rhine stands one of the seven won- 
ders of the modern world, the magnificent cathedral com- 
pleted during this decade. It is the final expression of Von 
Rile's original design. One pattern has been brought to per- 
fection after the lapse of 600 years. My friends, the pattern 
for God's church here is still in your hands. We have 
reached only the 250th year of its building. See that you 
build after the pattern of God. Go up to the mount very 
often and get the pattern renewed to your vision, the mount 
of conviction and prayer. Work by that pattern and never 
change it. 

But the great Cathedral of Cologne is built in the form of 
a cross. That was the architect's plan. The pattern which 
our fathers received from the hands of God was a church built 
after the similitude of the cross. If you forget this feature of 
the structure you do violence to the purpose of God. Keep 
the cross of Christ before you. 

In one of the towers of the same cathedral is a bell made 
by the melting together of French cannon. But the echoes 
of the battle-field are all gone ; only the harmony of praise to 
God and the call to worship remain. After the drum-beat 
came the church bell, out of which God took all the murmur of 
strife and intolerance and persecution ; subjecting our fathers 
to the heat of the furnace that the transformation might be 
complete; then, sending forth the tones of melody and praise, 
brought the people together in reverent worship. May God 
enlarge and complete the temple in the peace and prosperity 
of his people ! 



SERMON 



REV. SETH C. BEACH, 



IN THE 



First Parish Meeting-House, 



AT 3 P. M., 



November i8th, 1888. 



31 



"These all having obtained a good report through faith, received 
not the promise, god having provided some better thing for us, 

THAT THEY WITHOUT US SHOULD NOT BE MADE PERFECT." — Hebrews xi .' 

39, 40- 

The writer of this suggestive passage had drawn up a kind 
of a bead-roll of heroes, prophets, and saints, whose deeds 
had made almost every age of Hebrew history illustrious, and 
of whom he says " the world was not worthy." But great as 
they may have been in their achievements, to him they were 
doubly great in what those achievements had made possible. 
They "received not the promise;" there was more foreshad- 
owed to them than they attained, " God having provided some 
better thing for us " — to achieve that of which they failed, 
" that they without us might not be made perfect." As the 
writer looked back through the generations he seems to have 
seen a procession of great but unfinished careers, of lives full 
of promise too soon cut off. They were planned for greater 
things. The attainment of those things would fill up the 
measure of their stature and their destiny. It would finish 
their careers ; it would fulfill the broken promise of their 
lives ; it would, so to speak, complete them — in the writer's 
phrase, make them " perfect." This further attainment, which 
should at last give fullness and wholeness to their existence, 
was reserved for those that came after them. 

Expressed in ancient modes of thought and speech, if I 
mistake not, we have here the recognition of a fact which 
has become very prominent in our time. That fact is the 
continuity of the stream of thought and life through the ages. 
The generations are not independent of each other ; they are 
not merely joined to each other like links in a chain, each 
complete in itself ; rather they rise one on and above another 
like the successive stories of some great edifice ; they follow 
one another in succession like stages of vegetable growth — 
bud, blossom, and fruit ; they flow one out of another, into 



32 

another, like the periods of human life — infancy, youth, man- 
hood and age. So organic and vital is the relation that binds 
together the ages, that the human race has been aptly likened 
to a " colossal man whose life reaches from the creation to 
the day of judgment. The successive generations of men 
are days in this man's life." ' The earlier ages were his 
infancy ; our time is the heart of his youth ; his manhood is 
yet to come ; and far hence and fruitful, let us hope, will be 
his old age. So ordered and conditioned, human history 
becomes just like an individual human life — a growth and 
unfolding to which in our time the name " evolution " has been 
given. In this divine, world process each generation is a con- 
tinuation of the one before and a preparation for the next to 
come. Each succeeds to a work begun and leaves behind it 
an unfinished task. Each achieves a result given in its con- 
ditions, conditions of which its own fidelity is one, and it 
creates conditions which make other and further results pos- 
sible. Of each generation, in the language and meaning of 
the ancient phrase, one may say, it receives not the promise 
— some other thing, we love to believe "some better thing," 
larger result, finer attainment, being provided through its 
achievements for its successors. It leaves its plow in the 
furrow for other hands. It is for them to enter into its labors, 
work out its tendencies, make good its shortcomings, and 
finish its career. It is for them to fill up its outlines, round 
out its thought, and it may be, re-temper its spirit. Without 
these completions it cannot " be made perfect." 

In turning back the pages of history and opening the 
records of another and older generation it is due them to 
remember that we are reading the opening chapters of a 
story there only partly told. It is set down that at a given 
time and place such and such steps were taken, but it is not 
said whither they led. We see how, when, where, and by 
whom something <>f moment was set on foot, but it is not 
there that we can discover what was done. The sequel is 

1 Frederick Temple, D.D. "The Education of the World." Recent Inquiries 

in Theology \ I ind Review-.";. Boston, i86i, page 3. 



33 

part of their deed. It fell not in their time, but it belongs to 
their history. It is in fact the real substance of their history, 
the part chiefly to be considered in estimating their work and 
worth, discovering what they did and were, determining their 
weight and place. The rest is mere accident. Their condi- 
tions and circumstances, manners and customs, adventures 
and experiences, doings and sayings, the outward details of 
their existence, however important they may have seemed 
at the moment, were no more than the superficial and tran- 
sient accompaniment of their deed and life. These things go 
out with a generation. 

•• The letter fails, the systems fall, 
And every symbol wanes ; 
The spirit overbrooding all, 
Eternal Love remains." 

A certain divine substance, if it be a generation that has a 
divine substance, remains. Is not the life more than meat 
and the body than raiment ? Is not the substance which lives 
and moves in and through a generation more than its historic 
forms ? 

That sacred deposit, not its historic forms but its essential 
reality, it leaves in trust to other hands. By this deposit left 
in trust, found rather in the chronicles of another age than in 
its own, a generation is rightly to be judged, not always by 
what has been made of it, but by what might have been made 
of it. Not to show the generation you inherit at its best, not 
to make of it more than in its day it was able to make of 
itself, not to work out into fact what had been working perhaps 
unconsciously within it as an idea, is to be unfaithful to a 
trust. Its troubled ghosts might justly rise in condemnation 
of a stewardship which, leaving their beginnings without ade- 
quate result, had defrauded them of their own, had left their 
mark to fade which should have deepened with the flight of 
time, and had made them stand for less and less when they 
should have stood for more and more. 

We set apart this day to renew the memory, to us a sacred 
possession, of those who two centuries and a half ago dedi- 



34 

cated an altar on this spot and gathered around it this ancient 
church. It is a searching moment, not for them but for us. 
How have we discharged our stewardship of the things left 
by them to us in trust? It is easy for us, stroking ourselves 
with our nineteenth century conceit, to say, " Well done, good 
and faithful servant ; " but what would they say, those sturdy 
Puritan ancestors, if, in the fleshly tenements which they laid 
away with such confident expectation, they were to return to 
look for their ancient landmarks, stakes solemnly driven by 
them into the frame of things to tether the course of events ? 
How much of all that for which they forsook father and 
mother, houses and lands, to plant in this wilderness, would 
they find here, would they find anywhere, if they were to 
return today? Their manners, customs, modes of life, poli- 
tics, religion — these things exist today in tradition like their 
knee-breeches and powdered wigs. " Neither the civil nor the 
religious polity of the Puritans succeeded," says a high author- 
ity.' Neither in church nor in state did they leave behind 
them what they came to build. 

One of the things which they left behind them was this 
church — this and others not greatly better nor worse. What 
they came here to found was a church of the saints, such 
saints as might challenge the world to point out a defect in 
faith or practice. The ideal of the apostle, " a glorious church, 
not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing," which, after 
sanctifying and cleansing " with the washing of water by the 
word," Christ should " present unto himself," the Puritan 
thought he could and must present his Master at the begin- 
ning. It was a picked company of men and women who first 
planted the standard of civilization upon this coast. " They 
were precisely the idealists of England," says Emerson ; " the 
most religious in a religious era." Gov. Stoughton said that 
" God sifted a whole nation that he might send choice seed 
into this wilderness." How our church doors would open at 



1 President C. W. Eliot, I.I.. I » First Church, Cambridge. 250th Anniversary, 
page 117. 



35 

their knock today ! What Christian fold so walled up, what 
ecclesiastical fellowship so select, that such applicants if they 
came would be barred out ? That innocence which a court of 
justice presumes of every man until proved guilty, our 
churches would surely presume of such applicants as they 
and ask no further passport to fellowship. There were no 
such easily-opened doors in the churches which the Puritans 
sought to build. The seed for which God had sifted a whole 
nation had to be sifted again before it was fit for that garden 
of the Lord, a Puritan church. Some idea of what the Puri- 
tan required of a fellow mortal may be inferred when the Rev. 
Thomas Shepherd, of Cambridge, tells us of his flock of 
churchmen across the sea, that he could find but one person 
of " any godliness " in the whole parish. We see how impos- 
sible it would have been in such an unsifted community to 
have had a church in the Puritan sense of the word. Out of 
such intractable material only a Catholic or an Anglican 
church, to which any baptized humanity is eligible, was possi- 
ble in that age. 

To show how difficult it was, even in a sifted community, 
to gather a church that answered to the Puritan idea, consti- 
tutes the unique interest and value of the records of this 
church. Nowhere else, perhaps, has the story of the found- 
ing of a Puritan church been told with so much minuteness 
of detail. That enterprise, the founding of a church, it must 
be remembered, was the great business of a Puritan's life. 
Not to have seen him in what he considered his predestinated 
part would be to miss his most characteristic traits ; would be 
like drawing his image without the features of the man he 
was. 

It is the just pride of one, perhaps of more than one, Chris- 
tian body of this generation that it builds and dedicates on 
an average one church each day. The achievement is sup- 
posed almost to mark an epoch. It is safe to say that the 
Puritan would have taken neither pride nor comfort in such 
phenomenal results. If his leaden eyes were to open on this 
scene today, nothing in our modern life would astonish him 



36 

more than the ease and celerity with which an evangelist or 
missionary enters a town upon the frontier, calls together the 
populace, and organizes a church ; and his astonishment would 
not be lessened when he saw out of what material and with 
how little question the feat was consummated. Hundreds of 
churches in the modern sense will be organized this coming 
year, but not one of them can leave behind it such a story of 
its beginnings as, by virtue of its Puritan origin, this ancient 
church has to tell. 

It was agreed, say the records, that " all the inhabitants 
that affected church membership or pleased to come " should 
meet at each other's houses, " lovingly to discourse and con- 
sult together" upon matters relating to the "civil society" 
and looking toward a " church society." This was in 1637, 
and was apparently the first visible step toward the formation 
of a church. It may not have been a late step, but it 
can hardly be called early considering that the settlement was 
begun in 1635, that a record of births had been kept for two 
years, that the plantation already numbered "about thirty 
families," and that to build a church was the chief business 
for which those thirty families had come to this wilderness. 
But the building of a church was a matter concerning which 
the Puritan took both time and pains. 

Weekly meetings — on Thursday, doubtless, because Sun- 
day was too sacred — were held till the ninth month of the 
succeeding year before that stage of preparation had been 
reached when a church could be organized. One likes to stop 
a moment where they stopped so long, and see them meeting 
week by week, perhaps for a year, perhaps more, carefully 
feeling of each other's souls, or, as the records put it, becoming 
" further acquainted w"' ye (spiritual) tempers and guifts of 
one another." Every one, say the records, was permitted 
freely to put his questions or objections, " so it were humbly 
& w th a teachable hart, not w"' any mind of cavilling or 
contradicting, w'h order was so well observed as generally 
all such reasonings were very peaceable, loving & tender, much 
to edification." That is a picture to dwell upon when, re- 



37 

membering that these men and women were exiles, strangers 
to each other, and in a wilderness, you consider how serious 
life was to them and for what cause. 

Among the questions discussed, one was that, in the lan- 
guage of the records, " concerning the matter," the composi- 
tion of a church. It was agreed that " the p'per matter of such 
a church is visible believers or sts, for as faith itselfe unites 
to Christ & makes a member of ye invisible church, so such a 
p'fession of faith (& holynes ye frute of it) as makes it visible 
makes a man a fitt matter for a visible church." " Visible 
believers or saints ! " It is made clear that " visible believers " 
are believers who show their faith by their works, to what 
degree their further description, " saints," leaves in no doubt. 
As the Puritan meant by "saints" certainly not less than the 
word means with us, this was requiring a good deal of the 
" proper matter" of a church. Such matter has never been 
common in any generation, and we see why the gathering of 
a church answering to this demand was not to be effected in 
haste. 

"Butt ye number & w't p'sons should 1* join e," it was 
reasonably held not to be " much materiall so y ei be such 
as are living stones ; & such as may haue some measure of 
faithfull care and disserving to keepy e church pure & allso be 
of y* inocency of life as may invite other s ts more willingly to 
joine to y m ." In words this is not very different from what 
we should say today : " Such as may have some measure of 
faithful care and deserving ; " but if you or I had thought 
" some measure of faithful care and deserving" opened a door 
wide enough for us, with our shortcomings of faith and prac- 
tice, we should surely have been speedily undeceived. " It 
was co'cluded," say the records, that only those ought to be 
received who " make ther faith & holynes visible — not only 
by a civille restrained life and some religious duties p'formed, 
but such as by a p'fession of an inward worke of faith & 
grace, declared by an holy life sutable thereto, may p'suade 
y e church to imbrace them w th such brotherly love as ought to 
be amongst s t3 in so neere a covenant." A few of us, even by 



38 

a board of Puritan ciders, might possibly be certified for "a 
civille & restrained life and some religious duties done," but 
this, with which in practice a modern church is generally dis- 
posed to be content, did not open the doors of a Puritan church. 

It would have been convenient for such as we if those 
brethren who had met week after week for so many months, 
" lovingly to discourse and consult," could have voted them- 
selv ots" or taken each other for better or worse, 

and admitting themselves to fellowship whoever else they 
might choose to keep out, had organized a church. " We the 
undersigned" is the modern formula. It is true "we the 
undersigned " are not always saints, but how even under a Pur- 
itan dispensation was the original membership of a church to 
be tested and certified ? 

It happened that among the settlers in Dedham there were 
some members of the church in Watertown. If these were 
dismissed from the Watertown church they might form for a 
church in Dedham a nucleus of approved material; but a 
Puritan church looked after its members. If it was difficult 
to enter, it was not easier to withdraw. The Watertown 
church refused to dismiss the Dedham residents. The mis- 
sionary age had not yet come. u This way, and help being 
denied," say the records, "y e society looked at J. Allin . . . 
to sett upon y e worke w th such as might be thought meete." 
John Allin seems to have been by general consent declared 
" a fitt matter for a visible church," and with him the corner- 
stone of the church in Dedham may be said to have been 
laid. John Allin proposed to invite Ralph Wheelocke to his 
fellowship, and these two were to have invited a third, and 
the three a fourth, and so one by one the sheep, selected from 
the goats, were to have been gathered into the fold. " But 
upon trial made that way," say the records, "we found it a 
very slow way." They had been feeling of each other's 
souls for months, and apparently there was but one saint of 
whom they all felt sure, but one other of whom he felt quite 
sure, and no third of whom the two felt sure. What they did 
in this emergency was, in the manner indicated, to select 



39 

ten men who seemed to come nearest the proper "matter" 
for a church, preliminary to an examination which left no 
questions to be asked. " Then setting apart a day of sol- 
lemne fasting & prayer among ourselues to humble & p'pare 
our harts to draw so nigh y e lord, ... we tooke an other 
day after it to open ev'ry one his spirituall condicion to y e rest, 
relating y e manner of our conversion to god & y e lords, fol- 
lowing p'ceedings in our soules w th p'sent apprehensions of 
gods loue or want thereof." This done, it was " concluded 
that ev'ry one should goe forth & leaue themselues & ther 
case to the scanning of y e rest, who did mutually p'mise to be 
faithfull & impartiall in giving ther judgm 1 on ev'ry one's 
case as thay concieued, & so informe y e company of any sin or 
offences that any knew to be in any such p'son so to be 
tried." 

"To be tried," we should say, was just the phrase to de- 
scribe such an ordeal. Six of the ten came through these 
flames with no smell of fire. Their names deserve to be 
remembered : John Allin, Ralph Wheelocke, John Luson, 
John Frayry, Eleazar Lusher, and Robert Hinsdall. For 
four unhappily the scorching heat of this furnace was too hot. 
Edward Alleyn, "leader of the pioneers" 1 though he was, 
"was desired to wait;" of Anthony Fisher "it was thought 
meete to seek y e humbling & tryall of his spiritt ; " Joseph 
Kingsbury, though the " company was very zealous of him," 
was " too much addicted to the world." " Partly to try his 
spiritt how it would submitt to an ordinance thay left a gentle 
exhortation w th him." The victim seems to have suspected 
them of experimenting with " his spirit how it would submit 
to an ordinance," and it affected him apparently in a manner 
to surprise the brethren. He " remained stiff & unhumbled 
& not clering hims'." When "one of y e company whom 
y e lord had used of to follow home things close upon him " 
had come to discharge that delicate duty, the amount of nat- 
ural man in this Kingsbury heart became evident. In the 



1 Erastus Worthington. Historical Address. Town of Dedham. 250th 
Anniversary, page 62. 



40 

language of the records. " v" lord left him, w*hout any p' vo- 
cation thereto, unto such a distempered passionate flying out 
upon " him that they " gave him wholy ov'r." As for Thomas 
Morse, " though his life was innocent in respect of men," he 
was found to be "so dark & unsatisfying in respect of 
y' worke of grace " that " thay had no grounds to imbrace 
him into this society except thay should see further, & so 
declared unto him." 

So far as appears from the records the four candidates left 
out of this very limited fellowship were every whit as worthy 
as the six that went in. In our time, even in the practice 
of the straitest sects, ten such candidates, representing as 
they evidently did different religious types, would be allowed 
to represent different religious types, and would all receive 
the same cordial welcome to fellowship. 

There is more than matter for amusement in this history ; 
there is light upon one of the perplexing problems of present 
experience. In all churches touched by the Puritan tradition, 
what minister has not had his invitation to" join the church " 
met again and again by the pathetic answer, " I am not good 
enough" ? Whence came this idea that the church is some- 
thing altogether too pure and holy to be approached by mere 
ordinary humanity still subject to mortal conditions ? Those 
born to Catholic traditions, to Church of England traditions, 
to Episcopalian traditions, enter the church with a lightness 
of heart that betokens no such feeling that, as it were, they 
are crossing the threshold of the other world. This sense of 
something altogether supernatural, the feeling that the church 
is different not only in object but in nature from anything 
else on this earth, is a Puritan inheritance. To one who will 
read these records its origin can no longer be a mystery. 
The process of beating the grain from the straw, and sifting 
the wheat from the chaff, was of a nature not only to teach a 
generation what chosen seed, what perfect kernels of faith 
and piety, were required, but to so grind it into the con- 
sciousness that a feeling of it would cling like an instinct 
to their descendants for two hundred and fifty years. 



4i 

It may be doubted if any other idea peculiar to the Puritan 
survives him with such persistent vitality. Not certainly the 
idea of a union of church and state. That survives him but 
scarcely among his posterity ; and besides, his idea was hardly 
union of church and state. With him the church was the 
state. It furnished the material for the state; it held the 
reins of government ; its members held the offices ; its mem- 
bers cast the votes ; the state was, as we may say, a kind of 
committee of the church. We have a very different order of 
things today. The state is no longer in the leading-strings of 
the church. This idea of the Puritan has utterly gone by. 
His creed then — his peculiar theology? This generation 
hardly knows what it was. That too has gone by. But his 
idea of the church as something quite apart from the world, on 
the earth but not of it, the inner circle of the elect, remains. 
It is in the air we breathe: it surrounds us like an atmos- 
phere. 

Not that in this generation any one believes that such a 
body of the perfected, in the Puritan's phrase, of " visible 
saints," exists upon earth, much less that half a dozen such 
differing in name, faith, and spirit, exist in every village ; but 
it is the current supposition that this is what the church 
claims to be, and indeed ought to be if it is to be at all. 
In the day of the Puritan the church stood apart from the 
world ; in our day the world has shown a disposition to stand 
away from the church. The invitations of the church are 
liable to be met by two strangely contradictory objections often 
from the same lips : the objection that one is not good enough 
for the church, and the objection that the church is not 
good enough for him — is, in short, not what it pretends to be ; 
is a whited sepulchre. Either objection would be fatal to 
the church in this generation, and both objections get all 
their point from the assumption that the church is a recep- 
tacle set apart for the saints. Conceive it as a nursery of 
the spirit, a school of disciples, much more as a hospital for 
the cure of souls, and the objection that one is not good 
enough is pointless, and the objection that the church is false, 



is a whited sepulchre, would not often be urged. There has 
been but one way in which to meet and turn these objections, 
but one way to make our bark seaworthy in this generation, 
and that has been to conceive, define, and interpret the church 
anew, nmre in accordance with the precept of him who said, 
" The whole need not a physician, but they that are sick." 
This " better thing," thanks to the fathers who made it pos- 
sible, God has provided for us — a church more touched with 
a sense of human infirmity and more closely related to the 
earthly possibilities of human life. 

I can conceive that in his own day the iron purpose of the 
Puritan to realize an impossible ideal, and to present to the 
Master an immaculate bride, a church without spot, may have 
had its use. He was to make the church again a name to 
stand for righteousness. It had stood for almost anything but 
righteousness. It had forsaken its first love and purpose, had 
become a superstition and a ceremony, and was a scandal to 
the Christian name. The Puritan was to lift the church out 
of this mire. He did it with a thoroughness which left no 
shade of doubt. Me did it by putting trembling hearts upon 
a spiritual rack and keeping them there till life and death 
seemed about equally a terror, in order to test the complete- 
ness or incompleteness of the work of grace. It was a ter- 
rible ordeal, but it taught that the church meant righteousness, 
and the lesson was worth the price. 

Moreover, the Puritan was not merely creating a church ; 
he was shaping a civilization. We see, as it was not possible 
to have foreseen, what momentous issues waited upon his 
steps. It was for him to give such an energy to the tide of 
civilization that it should carry us, as it has, through the 
absorption of alien civilizations and barbarisms from every 
corner of the globe ; that it should carry us through, if we 
are carried through, the assimilation of solid masses of Afri- 
can ignorance, whole tribes of Indian savagery, and ship-loads 
ot Mongolian vice. A stream that is to wash through and fer- 
tilize such wastes must come from a height. The Puritan 
met this need, and he met it through his church. He made, 



43 

he certainly aimed to make, his church an aristocracy of life 
and character, and he turned it to account by putting into its 
hands the public care of the community. It had its hand 
upon every head. You might hate it, but you could not 
escape its touch. Like the Omniscient Eye it beset you 
behind and before. It made itself responsible for the law- 
makers — they were church members ; it made itself respon- 
sible for the magistrates — they were church members ; it 
made itself responsible for the voters — they too were church 
members. That meant picked men, men picked by what 
process we have seen, in the seats of influence and authority. 

The Puritan was no democrat ; he was the most unbending 
aristocrat. America for Americans — meaning not the abor- 
igines, but himself — was his political creed. Homes for all, 
votes for all, and an office for all, would never have been his 
cry. Not everybody, man or woman, but only the best and 
not too many of these, had a right to govern. Are there not 
times when we would gladly return to that doctrine if we 
could ? Alas ! we might as well undertake to drive back the 
sea. Whatever may be our faith, universal suffrage appears 
to be our destiny ; but the Puritan with his church stayed that 
tide for more than a hundred years, while he poured through 
the channels of public life a stream of great and noble traditions 
drawn from the highest levels of his age. If universal suf- 
frage is safe with us it would be safe today in no other country 
on the globe ; if it is safe with us it is because with us it is 
universal suffrage tempered by Puritan traditions. 

Perhaps even in this perilous ordering of our destinies God 
has provided " some better thing for us " than our fathers 
dared permit themselves to enjoy. Plainly such has been 
the rule of a wise and kindly Providence. To what depart- 
ment of our lives can we point in which, through the inherit- 
ance of the fathers, some better thing has not been provided 
for their children ? Ours is a wider knowledge, a sweeter 
faith, a gentler spirit, a more cheerful and kindly righteous- 
ness, a thousand added conveniences of life, and a better con- 
ditioned existence. But however we may extend the enumer- 



44 

ation of the better things which God in his providence has 
provided for us, " what have we that we did not receive ? " It is 
not for us to say, "Our power and the might of <>ur hand hath 
gotten us this wealth." Most, .shall I say all, in our civiliza- 
tion that is peculiarly our own we owe to our Puritan inherit- 
ance. To the question of the apostle, " Who maketh thee to 
diiler ? " the answer is, our Puritan ancestry. 

How shall we do a fitting homage to the sacred memories 
that hallow this spot and hour? Partly.no doubt, by a full 
and grateful recognition of their priceless contribution toward 
our happier destinies; but still more by entering loyally into 
their stewardship, building nobly upon the foundation which 
they laid with so much zeal and care, and furthering the ful- 
fillment of what they so well begun both to do and be. For 
" these all . . . obtained a good report through faith," but 
they " received not the promise, God having provided some 
better thing for us, that they without us might not be made 
perfect." 



45 



1638. i888. 

ORDER OF SERVICES 



AT THE 



€too ^unUrcd ant> fiftieth 9Umiitjer£arp 



OF THE GATHERING OF THE 



First Church in Dedham, 



Under JOHN ALLIN, Nov. T % 163S. 



MONDAY, NOVEMBER ig, 1888. 



4 6 



First Parish Meeting-House, 

AT THKr.l O'CLOCK r. K. 



I. ORGAN ViHA NTARY. 



II. AN I III M. 
-nail dwell in the land." — J. Stainer. 



III. RE VDING I 'I- SCRIPT! RE. 

Kk\ . Ski ii < . Bl ACH. 



IV. PRA\ I.K. 
Rev. Joseph B. Seabury. 



\". HYMN. — Tune: " 1'ark Street." 

IN pleasant lands have fallen the lines 
That bound our goodly heritage ; 
And safe beneath our sheltering lines 
Our youth is blest, and soothed our age. 

What thanks, < » God, t<> Thee are due. 

That Tlmu didst plant our lathers here; 
And watch and guard tin m as they grew, 
A vineyard, to the planter dear. 

The toils they l>ore our ease have wrought; 

They sowed in tears — in jo\ we reap; 
The birthright they so deai ■ 

We'll guard till we with them shall sleep. 

Thy kindness u> our fathers, shown 
In weal and woe through all the past, 

Their grateful sons, < • < rod, shall own, 
While here theii name and rat -hail last. 



— Janus Flint. 



\ I [NTRODI < TOR\ ADDRESS. 

m k. Alfred i i i win-. 



VTI. AN i III If. 
Gloria." From the Twelfth Mass. — 



VIII. ADDR] SS. 
Rev. Geo lis, D. D. 



o 



47 

IX, HYMN.— Tune: "America." 

By Rev. Seth C. Beach. 

UR fathers' God and ours, Like Israel's chosen band, 

Lord of all heavenly powers, Heirs of a promised land, 



Our voice attend ; Thou led'st them forth ; 

Anthems of thanks and praise, Like Israel's host they came, 

Blest Light in darksome days, Thy will their law and aim, 

To Thee thy people raise, Seeking no meed of fame 

Our Guide and Friend. But manly worth. 

Hallowed for us the sod 

On which their feet have trod, 

'Neath which they sleep. 
The church, 'twas theirs to rear, 
The truth they planted here, 
Their faith that knew no fear, 

Be ours to keep. 



X. BENEDICTION. — Rev. P. B. Davis. 



First Congregational Meeting- House, 

AT SEVEN O'CLOCK P. M. 



Don Gleason Hill, Esq., will preside. 



I. ORGAN VOLUNTARY. 



II. ANTHEM. "Send out thy light."— C. GotoioJ. 



III. SCRIPTURE READING AND PRAYER. 
Rev. George H. Young, Boston. 



IV. HYMN. —Tune: " Boylston." 

I LOVE thy kingdom, Lord, For her my tears shall fall, 

The house of thine abode, For her my prayers ascend ; 

The Church our blest Redeemer saved To her my cares and toils be given, 

With his own precious blood. Till toils and cares shall end. 

I love thy Church, O God ! Sure as thy truth shall last, 

Her walls before thee stand, To Zion shall be given 

Dear as the apple of thine eye, The brightest glories earth can yield, 

And graven on thine hand. And brighter bliss of heaven. 

— Timothy Dwight. 



V. ADDRESS. 
Rev. Henry M. Dexter, D. D. 



VI. ADDRESS. 
Rev. George E. Ellis, D. D. 



48 



VII. HYMN.— Tone: "Duke Street." • 

Of .1 »l i, beneath thy guiding hand 
< '.n ! the sea ; 

•\nd when they trod the wintry strand, 
With prayer and psalm they worshiped thee. 

Thou heard'st, well pleased, the son^, the prayer; 
Thy blessing came; and still its power 

onward through all ages i 
The memory of that holy hour. 

Laws, freedom, truth, and faith in God 
Came with those exiles o'er the waves; 

And where their pilgrim feet have trod. 
The God they trusted guards their graves. 

And here thy name, God of Love, 

Their children's children shall adore, 
Till these eternal hills remove, 

And spring adorns the earth no more. 

— Rev. Leonard Bacon. 



VIII. ADDR] 
Rev. Alexander McKenzie, D. D, 



IX. CHORAL. 
'A mighty fortress is our God." — Martin Luther. 



X. ADDRESS 
Rev. Jonath \n Edwards. 



XL ADDR] 
Rev. Bknjamin II. Bailey. 



XII. DOXOLOGY. — " Old Hundred." 

FR< >M all that dwell below the skies 
Let the Creator's praise arise ; 
the Redeemer's name be sung 
Through every land, by every tongue. 

Kternal are thy mercies, Lord : 
Eternal truth attends thy word; 
Thy praise shall sound from snore to shore, 
Till suns shall rise and set no more. 

— I sane Walts. 



XIII. BEN! DII TION. 
Rev. s. < . Bs \< h. 



• I I i- hvmn was lined otf by Mr. A. \V. Thayer, sung by the congregation, and accompanied 
iged instruments. 



Services 



MONDAY AFTERNOON, 



IN THE 



First Parish Meeting-House 



Address of Welcome 



MR. ALFRED HEWINS. 



5i 



INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS 

By Mr. ALFRED HEWINS. 



It is with great pleasure, my friends, that I assume the 
agreeable and filial duty assigned me by the committee, of 
bidding you all a cordial welcome to this friendly meeting of 
two religious societies which have a common origin — this 
joyful reunion, rather let me call it — that together we may 
fitly commemorate the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary 
of the founding of the first Church of Christ in the ancient 
town of Dedham. 

Our joint convention for the grateful purpose of a common 
festival only emphasizes the spirit of good will and Christian 
courtesy which has been so happily maintained for many 
years between the two branches of the parent church, and 
gives an unusual interest to this occasion. 

We meet today on hallowed ground ; and as, in mutual 
charity and love, we gather around the altar erected upon this 
sacred spot by the fathers, it is well that our voices should 
mingle in devout thanksgiving and praise to Almighty God, 
that its fire still burns, after these two hundred and fifty 
years, with a flame steady and unquenchable. 

The Dedham church was among the earliest to be organized 
in the Massachusetts Colony. On the eighth day of the ninth 
month, 1638 (as runs the record), and but three years after the 
commencement of the settlement of the town, there gathered 
here a small but earnest company of Christian men, with John 
Allin as their leader, for the high purpose of consecrating 
themselves to the service of their Maker. As humble fol- 
lowers of the Master, and under the guiding inspiration of 
his gospel, with prayer and covenant, they reverently laid the 



52 

foundations of this ancient church. The simple but impressive 
ceremony by which they accomplished their purpose, and so 
fulfilled the desire of their hearts, is thus recorded: 

" Having prepared the way for entering into church cove- 
nant, we appointed a day for that purpose. We then sent 
letters to the magistrates and churches, giving them notice of 
our intention and requesting the countenance and encourage- 
ment of both magistrates and churches. In the letters we 
sent to the churches their presence and spiritual help were 
requested. We agreed that the day appointed should be 
spent in solemn prayer and fasting. Mr. Wheelock was to 
pray, then Mr. Allin ; and Mr. Allin, by way of exercising 
gifts, spoke to the assembly. Then each of the eight persons 
made a public profession of his qualification as to faith and 
grace. Then Mr. Allin addressed the churches and desired 
them to speak plainly and faithfully their opinion of what 
they saw and heard. The elders of other churches then con- 
ferred together ; afterwards Mr. Mather, of Dorchester, said 
they saw nothing that should move us to desist, and gave us 
some loving exhortations. The covenant was then publicly 
read, to which all assented. After this, Mr. Allin dismissed 
the assembly, and then the elders gave each other the right 
hand of fellowship in token of loving acceptation of us into 
communion." ■ 

Such, my friends, is the brief recital of the event which 
today we have assembled to commemorate. The seed sowed 
here in weakness has been raised in strength. From a begin- 
ning so feeble has grown the long and honorable record which 
marks the life of this church, that has now continued for two 
hundred and fifty years. 

The centuries have wrought many changes in the outward 
appearance of our goodly town, but they have not diminished 
the reverence and honor in which the virtues and piety of 
John Allin and his associates are still held by thoughtful and 
devoted Christians in this community. Eight generations of 



1 Worthing! 



53 

the descendants and successors of those sturdy Puritans have 
loyally cherished and upheld the principles of civil and reli- 
gious freedom which they established, and continued here 
the beneficent work which they so zealously began. 

Although the affluent stream of our church's life no longer 
flows in an unbroken channel from the fountain, but now 
moves onward in two distinct currents of religious faith and 
energy, we rejoice that these separate branches, today so 
happily brought together, though differing in faith and doc- 
trine, are still united by the strong and enduring bond of a 
common Christian ancestry. They are sharers in the sacred 
associations and tender memories that have twined themselves 
about this venerable altar, and one in their inheritance of all 
the sweet and hallowing influences that have enriched and 
sanctified this spiritual home of our fathers. 

With equal reverence and affection we recall the devout 
men and saintly women who have worshiped in this church, 
and whose lives have been purified and ennobled by its sacred 
ministries. Yes, my friends, all the touching reminiscences 
and imperishable recollections of the past are to us a common 
possession, and they alike appeal to us all to be true to the 
sacred trust that has been committed to our care. 

In the spirit of the fathers, who frequently met " lovingly 
to discourse and consult together," we, their children, upon 
this festival day, will hold " sweet, neighborly converse; " and 
as our hearts shall thrill anew with the story of the sublime 
faith and heroism of the founders of our beloved church, rev- 
erently acknowledging our dependence upon the Supreme 
Ruler of the universe, let us join in an earnest prayer that a 
kindly spirit of love and Christian fellowship may ever con- 
tinue between these sister churches, until, their blessed 
mission fulfilled, they shall finally be reunited in the great 
congregation of heaven, where human souls find their only 
peace and rest. 

I should hardly do justice to my own feelings, or fitly repre- 
sent on this occasion a large number of the older members of 
the congregation who habitually worship in this house, did I 



54 

neglect to lay one flower upon the long-covered grave of the 

sainted minister whose serene face seems to smile upon me 
from the canvas, as I speak from the desk which he occupied 
for forty-two years. 

As we advance in life and are touched by the sorrows that 
sooner or later come to us all, we learn the inestimable value 
of the religious faith and instruction received at the home 
fireside and in the church of our childhood and youth. Rev- 
erently, today, I pay my tribute to the memory of Alvan 
Lamson, the sincere friend, the Christian scholar, the beloved 
pastor. The gentle tones of his voice still linger in my 
memory, recalling the gospel of " holiness, peace, and love" he 
so sweetly taught and so beautifully exemplified in his life. 
The tie that bound us to him is not broken ; the faith he so 
often presented from this pulpit appeals to us today with the 
added emphasis of immortality. 



The Church and the Parish in Massachusetts. 



USAGE AND LAW. 



ADDRESS 



George E. Ellis 



57 



The Church and the Parish in Massachusetts. 

USAGE AND LAW. 



Among the suggestions and reflections which oppressively 
crowd the thoughts of a diligent and well-furnished student 
of Christian history, especially that of the last four centuries, 
there are two of the gravest import. The first comes in the 
form of this question : Why was it that at the period of that 
distracting convulsion in the political and religious affairs of 
Europe called the Reformation — why was it, that the Roman 
Catholic Church did not in itself, by itself, and for itself, 
institute a thorough and searching process of purification, 
renovation, and even of reconstruction ? It seems as if, within 
the limits of practical possibilities, it might have done so. 
In so doing it might have won reverence, glory, and gratitude 
from its noblest members, and have silenced and discomfited 
its enemies. What deplorable strifes, woes, and tragedies 
might then have been averted from our common humanity ! 

That church stood for and claimed to be representative on 
the earth of the kingdom of God — a divinely constituted 
society, with truth, virtue and piety for its foundation pillars, 
with justice and righteousness for the methods and the ends 
of its rule. That church, as yet unshattered in its august 
fabric, seemed to present the only opportunity and agency 
there had as yet been in history — must we say, also, the only 
one there ever will be? — for uniting a family of Christian 
nations, the most advanced and steadily progressive states and 
kingdoms of the civilized world, into one Christian common- 
wealth, ruled in all their highest concerns by an inspired 
super-earthly authority. 

That church then, always, and now, had and has some of 
the noblest and most awing elements and principles for hold- 



58 

inp: the l.nc, reverence and obedience of all classes of men 
and women. Its claim and purpose of unity and universality 
gave it grandeur and dignity. Its marvelous organization 
rivals in earthly gradation and order the rankings of a solar 
lanetary system. It improved with aptitude and skill its 
grand opportunity to substitute a unifying spiritual sway over 
the fragments of a wrecked political empire. By conciliation 
and thraldom, by temporizing arts and mediating interventions, 
it established a more than feudal rule over royal vassals. It 
made itself needful and powerful in the balancings of political 
strategies. It had ingenuity in intrigue, and for provoking 
wars, campaigns, and insurrections, from which it gathered in 
the spoils. It was for centuries the only mediator and arbiter 
in all diplomatic intricacies. Its intervention, invited or 
obtruded, decided the smallest and the largest issues. What 
splendid service that church had wrought in rekindling civili- 
zation in Europe; in restoring, preserving, and extending all 
learning; in turning quarries of stone into cathedrals of 
majestic sublimity and beauty ; in spreading upon the radiant 
canvas the whole Bible and all sacred history, with saints and 
heroes, men and women, in truth and in fond legends, in rich- 
est tints and pigments. What a galaxy of starry witnesses, 
servants, and disciples makes up the church calendar of saint- 
hood, of orders, fraternities, and sisterhoods, of scholars, of 
statesmen, of the wise and valiant, of lonely missionaries in 
all their heroisms ! These were the mighty and splendid pos- 
sessions and achievements of that church, fitting it to guide 
and consecrate the civilization of the world. 

Why, then, did not that august and potent hierarchy, in the 
crisis of peril to its sway and unity, assume the faithful work 
of its own purification and renovation, repudiating and cast- 
ing out of it all that made it hateful and false and insufferable 
among men ? It had had solemn remonstrances and warnings 
from wise, sagacious, and holy men within its as yet unbroken 
fold. "Reformers before the Reformation " is the familiar 
and honorable designation of a role of faithful disciples, but 
stern censors, within its yet unsundercd fellowship — men, 



59 

some of whom the church has since beatified — who pleaded 
in vain for self-renewal and purification from its enormities 
and scandals. 

The answer to our question, which includes the most of the 
grounds and reasons why the church could not avert the 
assault and rupture and humiliation of the Reformation, is 
expressed in the sentence that it had become entangled, 
diseased, and corrupted by the things of this world. It was 
vitiated through and through by an element of falsity. There 
was not left in it the soundness and energy of wholesome, 
recuperative life. It had lost its coporate sanctity. It had 
entered into leagues, and bargains, and plottings, and rivalries 
with states and princes, espousing their strifes, introducing 
astute churchmen into their cabinet councils and guiding 
their military campaigns. It put to service, for ends of 
worldly ambition, all the trickeries of artifice, policy, intrigue 
and double dealing with an ingenuity which perplexed and 
baffled the most cunning diplomacy. Its greed and grasping 
for land had made it the largest territorial proprietor and 
temporal potentate in all Europe. Internally it was riven 
with dissensions, with popes and anti-popes contesting for the 
sovereignty. Simony, nepotism, sensual vices, and every 
form of unrighteousness and crime made popes, cardinals, and 
ecclesiastics of every grade, the subjects of scandal and 
reprobation. Marriage being forbidden to the clergy, free 
concubinage was the consequence. Fraudulent and fabulous 
pretensions underlay the very foundations of the papacy, and 
groveling and childish superstitions were the most potent 
elements of its sway over its docile and credulous disciples. 

All these fatal and condemnatory verdicts against the 
Church come from accusers and revelations within its own 
fold, from the " Reformers before the Reformation ; " before a 
single word had been uttered or a single line had been written 
by an avowed Protestant. It suits the modern champions of 
the Roman Church to ascribe the convulsion of the Reforma- 
tion in our mother England to the resentment of Henry VIII 
of the refusal of successive popes to sanction his divorce from 



6o 

his lawful wife. As if the lustful passion of one man, monarch 
though he was, could have kindled Europe into revolt from 
the papacy. Hut moral and religious scruples against a sanc- 
tion of divorce were the least of the motives which wrought 
with the pontiffs. Their entanglements with imperial and 
royal policies and rivalries were the obstructions. We can 
hardly assign moral scruples to the pontiffs of that era, when 
we have seen their successor, this very year, granting to a 
ducal applicant permission to commit the sin of incest, for a 
money consideration. 

The alternative is open for those who choose to decide, 
either that the church lacked the will and the resolution for 
its own purification, or that corruption in its very organism 
and vitals would have made the process fatal to its life. But 
this internal reform failing, the consequences were division 
within, assault and protest from without, and an irreconcil- 
able rupture. 

The able and eminent French bishop, Bossuet, thought he 
had exposed a fatal and irremediable error in Protestantism, 
more than a century after it had been showing its fruits, by 
setting forth with vigorous raillery its " Variations." Protest- 
antism was the parent of Discord. Its divisions and sub- 
divisions into fragmentary sects, with their contentions, were 
a scandal upon religion, bringing it into contempt. By some 
Protestants these variations have been lamented and con- 
demned as just occasions of reproach. Others, wise and 
serious observers, even in view of all the discord and conten- 
tions of sects, have been reconciled to them as the results of 
sincere and earnest apprehensions of the manifold elements 
of truth. 

At first view it might seem remarkable that the old church 
should have apparently been so wholly free of sectarian divi- 
sions ; but on a keener study of the matter we are brought to 
recognize tiie sagacious policy of that church in contrast with 
the scattering tendency of Protestantism. However rigid 
may be the rule of doctrine and discipline in a church main- 
taining strict unity, there will always appear from time to 



6i 

time, in its fold, men and women of strong individuality of 
opinion, temperament, impulse, or zeal, emphasizing some 
single virtue, habit of life, rule of observance, method of devo- 
tion, or type of piety. These would break off into sects 
under Protestantism. But the Roman Church, with an adroit 
and wise balancing of indulgence and restraint of freedom and 
authority, allowed all these threatening individualisms to 
spend their energy and zeal in organizing orders, fraternities, 
sisterhoods, with their rules, statutes, occupations, preferred 
devotions, and special garb — all held, however, to the root of 
unity. They were like little rills, rising and swelling from 
distant and independent springs and hidden fountains, but 
quietly led on in their channels to the one full stream. But 
in Protestantism every eccentricity and individuality in active 
and restless minds has produced a fissure and a fracture, split- 
ting off into a sect. 

This leads us to recognize the second of those gravest 
reflections derived from the study of our Christian history of 
the last four centuries, and which will bring us nearer to our 
special theme. It is a profound impression of the entire lack 
of apprehension and consciousness in the whole reforming 
party of the consequences to themselves and to 3.11 who 
should follow them, of their repudiation of a long vested 
authority in religion, and of their utter lack of any adequate 
substitute for it. It was as when part of the company on a 
well-furnished but imperilled ship desert it for the open sea, 
leaving behind them compass and charts, pilot and com- 
mander. Little did those Reformers realize the infinite dis- 
tractions which were to follow, to vex them with discord and 
strife, with endless alienations and divisions, and the bitter- 
ness and iniquity of mutual persecutions. Long wonted to 
the restraints and guidance and forced adhesions of authority, 
they knew not how to use freedom for common ends of 
harmony. Every single step in the inevitable series of pro- 
gressive stages of development, expansion, enlargement, and 
liberalization under Protestantism, which ought to have been 
looked for as the most natural and reasonable consequences 






of parting from authority, has come even upon the m< >st intel- 
ligent and rightly-intentioned men as a shock or surprise, 
exciting amazement und horror, and prompting them, when it 
was possible and feasible, to call in force, penalties, punish* 
ments, and the terrors of the law for suppression or ven- 
i e. The series of controversies, variances, and quarrels, 
with or without the interference of legal processes through 
which the history of Protestantism leads us, alike in the 
councils of nations and in the feuds of little villages, far 
;ds in length and in sadness of retrospect the revolutions, 
convulsions, and catastrophes which make up civil and political 
histi 

In leaving the ship of the Church for the open sea, the 
Reformers took with them the Bible. Precious beyond all 
expression or estimate is that sacred volume. Above the 
church on earth, with its hierarchy, better than the tubes and 
lenses of the astronomer with which he pierces to the secrets 
of the upper world, is that revealcr and witness of things 
divine. That volume serves with inexhaustible and ever- 
opening wealth the uses of piety and edification for men. 
But it is of no more use for preventing or reconciling the 
doctrinal diversities or contentions of its devoutest readers 
within the field of opinion and discipline than would be an 
unabridged dictionary. It furnishes indeed the material and 
provocation, the catch-words and symbols of all the sectarian 
divisions, the controversies, and contentions of centuries in 
the history of religion. 

It is with one of these, a trivial or a serious one, as you may 
regard it, in the infinitely varied series of such successive 
developments, that I am now to deal. This then fair village 
was the scene and the occasion in which a legal tribunal was 
called upon for judgment concerning one of these (shall I 
call them ?) developments and results of Protestantism. 
Many years ago I had come to the resolve — after much 
thought, time, and labor, privately and through the press, 
given to such subjects — that I would never again concern 
myself with, or speak, write, or publish anything connected 



63 

with our old religious controversies. It is difficult to reach the 
hard-pan through those bogs and underlying quicksands. It 
is doubtful if there is any bottom to those soundings. So, 
when I was invited to the slight service which I am now to 
undertake, my first prompting was gently to release myself. 
But on reflection, the quality, the kindness, and the courtesy 
of the invitation, coming from two representative parties, 
gave to it an urgency for me. Nor was I long in reminding 
myself — indeed, the thought was spontaneous — that time and 
change and charity had so calmed and chastened the once 
embittered feelings of a sharp conflict, that its ashes might 
be analyzed without rekindling the fire. Not a word nor a 
moment would I give to the rehearsal of the alienation 
between townsmen, families, neighbors, and life-long friends 
attendant and consequent upon the variance. I have read the 
documents about it, but they have an ill flavor and odor in 
them which I will not cast upon this pleasant autumn air. 
All those once inflamed grievances are now as absent from 
the living in these scenes as they are stilled in the passionless 
dust of those sleeping in the village burial ground. 

Our subject has interest for us simply as putting before us 
a chapter or incident in the history and religious usages and 
legislation of Massachusetts. A judicial decision reached 
here established a legal precedent for all like cases that did or 
might arise in a period of strong excitement among the old 
Congregational societies of the State. The question which 
was opened was : What were the respective rights and privi- 
leges, as derived alike from history and traditional usage, and 
from constitutional and statute provisions, of two associated 
bodies in one of our old religious societies ; the one, the mem- 
bers and the proprietors in a corporate parish, compelled by 
legal enactments to support a public teacher of religion and 
morality; the other, an unincorporated, voluntary, and self- 
constituted fellowship within the parish, of men and women 
united by a covenant of their own approval, as a church for 
maintaining and enjoying Christian ordinances ? The two 
parties here could not dispose their difference by concession 



6 4 

or compromise, and as questions of property were concerned 
the interposition of the judiciary was inevitable. The decision 
was a shock and a surprise to the discomfited party. It was 
received as depriving the members of a church in covenant 
of a supposed inherited and established right. That is the 
point oi view from which I approach my subject. 

Let me ask you to withdraw your thoughts for a few 
moments from the local bearings of this subject, to which we 
will return with its special interests, and to engage them on 
its far wider, comprehensive relations. It was not at all 
strange that a church here in the wilderness, in the seven- 
teenth century, in the line of the generations of Christian 
discipleship, should regard itself in its relations to a local 
parish as a privileged body, with distinct and important rights. 
We shall have to look far back into Christian antiquity, even 
to the first promulgation of the religion, to find a full explana- 
tion and reasons for a special church prerogative. This is 
most vitally concerned with the continuity and the transmis- 
sion of the religion of Jesus Christ. All through the cent- 
uries of its course we may trace the existence, the presence, 
and the relations to each other of two distinct classes of 
persons, who gave it degrees of their attention and interest, 
and put themselves into quite different attitudes of disciple- 
ship and duty towards it. 

We should have to begin with the gospel narratives. We 
there read of selected, attached, and avowed followers and 
intimate attendants on Jesus, who shared his privacy and 
were favored by his confidence ; and we read also of another 
class, chance and irregular listeners to his teaching, called 
" the multitude," or "the people," pausing near him from 
curiosity or momentary prompting. We trace the presence 
of the same two parties with the same relations to each other 
in the subsequent ministry of the Apostles. In synagogues 
and market places were ready and curious listeners to prea h- 
ing and exhortation; and in private houses, apartments, and 
upper chambers were groups of avowed and earnest adherents 
with Christian convictions, faith, and mutual discipline. The 



65 

distinction was soon drawn, or rather, drew itself, between 
covenanted and uncovenanted disciples, between those who 
"gladly heard the word" and nothing further, and those who 
were known to each other as pledged, committed to constancy 
in intercourse and observance. Then came in what we know 
as covenants, ordinances, sacraments, recognized by these 
pledged disciples as methods for their mutual recognition, and 
the basis of their fellowship, their reliance on each other for 
sympathy, steadfastness, and support. For this inner fellow- 
ship were reserved confidences and privileges. 

The term " mass," as attached to the most august and 
solemn of the rites of the Church of Rome, carries in its 
definition the whole breadth and depth of the distinction 
drawn between companies and attendants on Christian teach- 
ing and exhortation, and the covenanted fellowship of 
disciples. The word " mass " is from missa or dimissa ; 
pronounced by the officiating minister it was a signal for the 
uninitiated to depart, that the inner fellowship might engage 
in a privileged and reserved service. 

Among the mountain heaps of Christian literature there 
may be — though I do not recall any such — a strong, argu- 
mentative essay which might deal very ably with this theme, 
viz. : that the survival and continuity in living presence of the 
Christian religion were vitally dependent from the very 
earliest age upon a pledged and covenanted body of avowed 
and constant disciples. Would anything be known or extant 
beyond a mere historical tradition of an instituted Christian 
religion had it not been for this original and perpetuated 
covenant-body of pledged disciples, as distinct from a random 
series of assemblies, congregations, listeners to preaching and 
exhortation ? 

If we were to follow up this subject it would lead to a clear, 
emphatic statement of the immeasurable influence which 
covenants, observances, communion rites, and sacraments 
have had in perpetuating Christianity. The old peripatetic 
philosophers were well named — traveling, wandering teachers. 
They had hearers, after a sort disciples. But they had no 



66 



covenants, no sacraments. They founded schools, but not 
churches. Some of the old pagan religions had their " mys- 
teries," but the only quality in them was mystery. The 
distinction between Christian churches and congregations was 
no after device. It was original from the first, drawn between 
listeners to, hearers of preaching, and those who cha> 
themselves with assumed and avowed obligations by covenant. 
This distinction has reached its extremest — it may be its 
unnatural and objectionable — division in the Church of Rome. 
In view of what we shall, by and by, have to recognize as the 
limited and subordinate relation into which the legal decision 
put our Congregational churches in their connection with 
parishes, we may well take note of the complete inversion of 
the relation of the two parties among the members of the 
Roman Church with which the laws of our State do not inter- 
fere. In that church, now so strongly established by Irish 
immigration into this old Puritan heritage, the existence of 
two parties, representing the church and the congregation, 
presents itself substantially as the distinction between the 
priesthood and the laity. In this respect the Roman dis- 
cipline is in complete antagonism with the rule established by 
the decision of our Supreme Court. 

In the Congregational fold the ministers were the servants, 
at best the equals, of the members of their flocks ; not their 
masters, or in anything their superiors. In all that concerned 
instituted religion, providing edifices and appliances for public 
worship, the collection and use of money, the choice and 
ordination of religious teachers, the establishment of a plat- 
form of faith and discipline, and the recognition of sister 
churches, the laity, the brethren, either took the initiative or 
had a joint participation in all affairs. Titles to land and 
edifices were vested in lay trustees. 

Observe how all this is wholly reversed in the usages of the 
Roman Church here. The priests constitute a fellowship as 
close and reticent and as free from legal visitation and over- 
sight, as are our secret fraternities — to which in all other 
respects but its own the church is so inimical. The laity 



6 7 

know of their conferences, methods, and purposes only so far 
as the priests choose to disclose them. The creed, the things to 
be believed in summary and detail, is imposed authoritatively. 
The construction and application of it are made by the priest- 
hood. Docile obedience to discipline is the prime condition 
of discipleship. All ceremonies, rites, and observances are of 
exaction. The laity have no choice in the selection or institu- 
tion of their pastors or teachers. The parish is made up and 
bounded for them. The laity contribute all the funds and 
resources, but have no voice in the allotment or disposal of 
them, and no treasury report of amount or use is ever returned 
to them. 

You pay your money, but you do not take your choice. 
Churches, colleges, schools, parsonages, seminaries, hospitals, 
and cemeteries spring forth like magic all around us, revealing 
to us only the energetic activity of the priesthood, and their 
marvelous success in gathering money. All this property of 
every kind is vested in the bishop of a diocese, and passes by 
an open will to his successor. The church may become the 
largest landholder in our country. Here in the priesthood, 
then, we have the church, infinitely transcending in functions 
and authority the covenanted fellowship among the Puritans. 
And where, meanwhile, is what answers to the congregation 
among them? It is composed of a consenting and docile 
flock, responsive to priestly counsels and requisitions, rev- 
erently kneeling before the altar, receiving the fragment of 
the holy wafer, and passing the ordeal of the confessional as 
the condition of a saving shrift in the solemn parting hour of 
life. 

Certainly, in the old, once dominant, but now shattered 
church, the distinction which I have historically traced between 
church and congregation has reached a most radical and divid- 
ing result. Going back to our own original Puritan usage 
seems like a return to primal simplicity. I have had in view 
merely to indicate that in some way, or by some method, 
through the succession of Christian generations, there has 
prevailed something answering to a distinction between church 



68 

and congregation, marked by covenants and sacramental 
symbols, for those who, so to speak, avowed discipleship and 
made themselves responsible for maintaining Christian observ- 
ances, while they were associated more or less intimately or 
dependently with chance assemblies of so-called " hearers of 
the Word." The inference has been intimated that the living 
perpetuity and discipleship of the Christian religion has been 
secured, as otherwise it would not have been, by the continuity 
of this pledged and covenanted body with sacramental 
symbols. There have been, as there are today, associations 
and assemblies on Sundays and other days for instruction, 
worship, sympathetic and ethical culture, and benevolent 
activity, which do not call themselves churches, but which are 
more or less under Christian baptism. They dispense with 
pledges and sacramental observances. Some of these have 
ceased after trial. It remains to be proved whether any such 
experiment can attain to Christian continuity. 

My aim has been so far to lead on to the question which 
our Puritan ancestry asked, and in their way answered — 
whether the church which had done such service was not 
entitled to some privilege and prerogative ? That was the 
real issue involved in the controversy with which we have to 
deal. 

Before I proceed further, and in view of what is to follow, 
I must here frankly avow that I feel a measure of sympathy 
on the side of those who were deeply aggrieved, as under a 
sense of wrong, by the practical workings and effects of the 
decision of the Supreme Court in the case that is to come 
before us. After considerable study and reading of subjects 
of intensified strife and contention, making up so largely what 
is called Christian history, I have learned the value of candor, 
of constraint upon the indulgence of preferences and pre- 
judices on my own side, and of large allowances for the lights 
and shades of all party conflicts. The decision of the court 
bore heavily and grievously upon religious relations and 
beliefs, associations and fellowships, which had become most 
dear and sacred to many devout hearts. 



6 9 

But let me explain that the personal sympathy to which I 
refer is not from preference or approval of the doctrinal 
tenets of either party, nor from any better temper or conduct 
of either party in the strife which followed. I would define 
it rather as an historic sympathy arising from a full view of 
facts, usages, traditions, and recognized methods with which 
the legal decision seemed to deal roughly. 

Let me repeat, the matter for adjudication concerned the 
respective prerogatives, privileges, and legal rights of parishes 
and of churches composed of some of their members gathered 
in the old Congregational societies in this State. The original 
General Court of the colony claimed the right of jurisdiction 
over the whole territory and the inhabitants within the bounds 
of the charter. It soon began to grant parcels of land within 
the wilderness, with valleys and meadows, to companies of 
petitioners for settlement. 

With a healthful dread of allowing bodies and groups of 
strolling, straggling adventurers — such as within our own cent- 
ury penetrated our western frontiers — to plant in lawlessness 
and disorder, the court in all cases made it a primary and requi- 
site condition of its grants, that each company should have with 
them, and should maintain, a competent minister of the gospel. 
This and other municipal provisions constituted our old 
towns parishes. The internal history of these early parishes 
offers matter of interest, including two very different classes 
of occasions and subjects — the one of gracious and edifying 
tenor, the other of variances, feuds, and quarrels. The one 
class presents us with noble and elevating themes, showing 
the origin and transmitted influence of principles and habits 
in religion, morality, and education, in the training of men and 
women and households in domestic fidelity and purity, in 
neighborly virtues, and in all that secures prosperity and good 
government — which has made Massachusetts the most privi- 
leged heritage on the earth. The ministers and the ministers' 
wives were the guardian angels of these wilderness settle- 
ments. 

But while all this excellent work of training and influence 



70 

went on, one who is curious in such things may trace through 
parish and church records a series of petty strifes and vexa- 
tions, sometimes sharp alienations, even on matters which 
look to us as of very trivial interest. In isolated, torpid, and 
humdrum scenes of laborious life, little things loom largely. 
Each parish had one or several of the following excitements 
to stir it : The choice for life-long settlement of a new min- 
ister, and the apportionment of his salary in beef, pork, corn, 
wood, and silver; the site for the rebuilding of the meeting- 
house ; the seating of the people in it according to social 
rank; changes in the mode of conducting public service; 
whether the Scriptures should be read with comments or 
without them ; the deaconing of a psalm or hymn, line by 
line, when the people could not afford psalm-books; the 
exchange of one psalm-book for another; the use of a pitch- 
pipe in starting a tune; the introduction of instruments, viol 
or organ ; the placing of singers, male and female, together; 
the piques and discords of choirs, and the innovations in warm- 
ing the house. These and how many more occasions were 
there for parish feuds, before there were yet separation and 
division by sects. 

We must now take another step in dealing with our subject. 
I have spoken of each of our early townships as being a 
parish for the compulsory support of public worship and in- 
struction, and of an internal body or fellowship of men and 
women covenanted together and constituting a church in each 
parish for the observance of ordinances. What were the 
relations between these bodies, on which in 1818 a judicial 
decision was found necessary ? 

It was in preparation for meeting this question that I began 
with a brief historical reference to a distinction drawn, from 
the first preaching of the gospel, between those who listened 
to it and those who were covenanted in discipleship to it. It 
was in full recognition of that distinction that congregations 
and church fellowships were from the first gathered in Mass- 
achusetts. The matter, simple at first, became complicated. 
Usages, allowed or tolerated, methods, asserted claims and 



7i 

rights well-nigh having the force of common law, and then a 
succession of legal statutes, frequently changed and coming 
into direct conflict with each other, had brought in the 
elements of confusion. 

The theory and practice of Congregationalism, by which 
the churches of Massachusetts were planted, as distinguished 
from Episcopacy or Presbyterianism, was the full and perfect 
right, under the New Testament pattern, for each company — 
of convenient size — covenanted together to choose, institute, 
and ordain all officers, pastors, teachers, ruling elders, and 
deacons needed by them in a congregation or church for 
teaching and ordinances. 

It has been often claimed that Congregationalism was 
organically and vitally identified with a certain system of 
doctrines in a formulated creed. The only ground for that 
claim is that, in the revival and restoration of the New Testa- 
ment Congregationalism by the Puritans, a certain formulated 
creed and system of doctrines were then prevailingly accepted. 
But that was no organic element of Congregationalism — 
which may consist with different doctrinal beliefs and usages. 
Democracy is distinguished from monarchy and aristocracy 
in government. But democracy is not identified with one 
special platform of principles or with a set of political usages 
and opinions. We shall have to refer farther on to the 
elements which came in to complicate the main issue in the 
contest, from the changes of doctrinal opinions and beliefs 
where there had once been substantial agreement. 

We must briefly review the methods, usages, and legal 
enactments which, from the first settlement of this colony, 
disposed of the relations between the two parts of a parish — 
the congregation and the covenanted inner fellowship, the 
church. 

We are at once reminded of the lack of uniformity, the 
variety of method adopted in this matter at different times 
and in different places. Sometimes a covenanted body, the 
church, was the original nucleus around which gathered a 
congregation, and the proportion of numbers in the member- 



72 

ship of each was constantly changing. Sometimes a church 
was formed within a previously assembled congregation that 
had maintained worship. Governor Winthrop, the Deputy 
Governor, "and many others, men and women," formed at 
Charlestown, July 30, 1630, the First Church of Boston. 
They had then no minister or other officers, which they 
elected and instituted a month afterwards. They called the 
body which they thus formed "a Congregation or Church." 
They signed a very simple and tender covenant without any 
doctrinal articles, which continues in use unchanged today. 
In other cases, as for example in this First Parish of Dedham, 
there had been worship under a tree and in a rude meeting- 
house by a congregation, within which was afterwards gath- 
ered a church. 

When the famous order of the court was passed, May 18, 
163 1, restricting the civil franchise to church members, the 
whole matter seemed to be decisively disposed of. For if 
church members were to have exclusive authority in all civil 
affairs they might well exercise their prerogative over congre- 
gations in parishes. It seems to me that the tenacity with 
which church bodies afterwards asserted their rights in the 
initiative choice and institution of ministers is to be referred 
to this original exclusive enjoyment of the franchise. This 
restriction upon citizenship was stoutly clung to till the royal 
order of Charles II, in 1665, positively insisted upon the 
enlargement of civil rights. Even then the sturdy court 
rather circumvented than complied with the order, by requir- 
ing that any man seeking a citizen's rights and not a church 
member should present such a certificate of character and 
orthodoxy, as well as property, as might have secured his 
admission to a church, if he had chosen to seek it. It was 
not strange, therefore, that when church members were de- 
prived of their exclusive civil rights they should infer that, as 
the king had not interfered with their church affairs, they 
could retain, in entail, their own precedency in the choice of 
their ministers. 

There were, however, four orders passed by the General 



73 

Court within a space of ten years, 1 636-1 646, by which con- 
fusion was introduced in the relations between inhabitants of 
a town and the churches in them. In the exercise of its 
authority by the court, first came in a provision that proved 
fatal to harmony and an element of injustice. This furnished 
a rightful and effective plea by which parishioners, not church 
members, could claim to have a voice in the choice of their 
ministers. The first of these orders was a requisition, in 
1636, applying to a single town (Newbury), that as the church 
members in it could not bear all the expenses they had in- 
curred in building a meeting-house and for their minister, the 
cost should be assessed, pro rata, upon all the inhabitants of 
the town. The second court order, 1638, made that same 
exaction for the support of churches and ministers applicable 
to all the towns ; the hint being dropped to reluctant persons 
that they might avail themselves of religious ministrations if 
they chose to do so. 

The third of those orders (1643) provided that the churches 
should be written to to enforce upon their members their 
duty of voting in civil affairs, when for any reason they failed 
to exercise it. The fourth order (1646) imposed upon every 
inhabitant of a town the obligation to attend on public wor- 
ship under a penalty of five shillings fine for each occasion of 
absence. The penalty in England for the offense at that time 
was only sixpence. 

Obvious enough it is, and reasonably enough it appears to 
us, that the court in these exactions — unwittingly, it doubtless 
was — provided the grounds and the materials for the strife 
which subsequently arose between parishes and churches as 
to the management of their joint affairs. The time was to 
come when churches would protest : " We will not have a 
pastor set over us whom we have not ourselves chosen and 
put in office ; " and when members of the parish would plead : 
" If you compel us, it may be against our will, to maintain and 
listen to a minister, we ought to have the privilege of selecting 
him." 

We can understand how, under the circumstances of chang- 



74 

ing times and opinions, harmony might first exist in the rela- 
tions between parishes and churches, and then how that har- 
mony would he disturbed. A continuance of a general accord 
in doctrinal belief would be one condition ; another would be 
the prepond in a parish of the number of those who 

were under the church covenant. Where the church embraced 
nearly the whole or a large majority of the male members of 
a parish, any variance between the two bodies in the selection 
of a minister would be ineffective if it showed itself. We 
must remember that the range of choice of ministers in our 
early years was limited. 

The following enactments are found under the head of 
Ecclesiastical Laws, in 164 1 : 

The inhabitants of any town, "who are orthodox in judge- 
ment and not scandalous in life," not as yet " in a church 
way," receive full liberty to enter into such in an orderly and 
Christian way, after having notified neighboring magistrates 
and churches of their intention, and receiving approbation. 
Each church so formed was free to exercise all Christian 
ordinances, to elect and ordain all officers — " able, pious, and 
orthodox" — and to admit, discipline, and expel members on 
due cause, "according to the Word ; " support of and attend- 
ance on all occasions of public worship are required under a 
penalty, and habitations for and maintenance of ministers are 
to be provided for by a town tax. To make sure of its intent 
in this matter, the court in 1668 declared that the church to 
which it had assigned such powers was to be understood as 
meaning only members in full communion, and the minister 
chosen by them should be such to the whole town. Any one 
not a church member, who presumed cither to take part in or 
to dispute the choice, should be proceeded against under civil 
process. This law, it will be observed for further reference, 
made the minister thus chosen both the religious teacher of 
the whole town and the pastor of the church. 

Restiveness and dissatisfaction soon prevailed under this 
tl disposal of some delicate matters. So we find a Prov- 
ince law, thirty years later, vested the choice of a minister in 



75 

the inhabitants of the town at large, with the singular proviso 
that if a town neglected for six months to choose a minister, 
then the court should provide and settle one. Thus the 
church was cut off with a salvo securing to it " all its privi- 
leges and freedom in worship, church order, and discipline." 
The next change in the law made a concurrent choice of 
parish and church requisite. Finally, another law enjoined 
that the church should initiate the choice, and if the town did 
not concur, then the church should call a council of three or 
five neighbor churches, whose decision should dispose of the 
variance for either party. I know of no case in which this 
reference to a council was used. The Legislature next gave 
the right of choice to the parish, independently of the church. 
This not working well, the church was allowed a concurrent 
vote, and the next year was reinstated in its exclusive privi- 
lege of electing the minister. A statute of 1754, proceeding 
on the fact that churches, as not being coporate bodies politic, 
could not hold property in succession, constituted deacons 
trustees of all church and parish property. Our State consti- 
tution and statutes gave the right of electing a minister to 
the parish from which he derived his support. 

There certainly was occasion enough in these frequent and 
radical changes in the legal interference with the relations of 
parishes and churches for provoking variance and strife. But 
there came in another complication in the case. The law 
rested in the provision that each town should have and main- 
tain "a public teacher of morality and religion." But it was 
contended that while such a minister might serve the use of a 
parish at large, he could not, as a matter of course, be consti- 
tuted by the parish the pastor of the church to officiate in 
ordinances. This sacred official character could not be given 
to him by vote of the town, for the earliest law had made 
covenanted members in communion the electors and ordainers 
of their pastors. So prescription and usage had come to 
require that ordination to a pastorate should be the solemn 
act of the church as such, calling in the presence and approba- 
tion of a council of sister churches. 



7 6 

The court was responsible also for all trouble from this 
source In its natural desire to secure harmonious, sisterly, 
and even unity of methods and discipline among the churches, 
to prevent their becoming eccentric and antagonistic individ- 
ualities, the court had prompted and approved the making of 
a platform of constitution and discipline with rules for neigh- 
boring churches, represented by pastors and delegates, to 
gather in councils to recognize the initiation of a new church 
body, the institution of a new pastorate, and to mediate and 
give advice where there was variance. So far as these coun- 
cils confined themselves to friendly, advisory, and unassuming 
offices they might serve excellent uses. But the moment 
they assumed authority they struck at the very foundation of 
Congregationalism, the full, complete independency of each 
Christian fellowship. Even laymen in the congregation 
might, and often did, ordain their ministers and other officers. 
True, these laymen represented a covenanted body, not the 
mere parish. But the parish had no need of a council except 
as matter of courtesy. Still, this call and intervention of a 
council came by usage to be regarded as an ecclesiastical 
ratification, and solemnity, which added to the teaching of 
morality and religion, the quality of an ordained pastor of a 
church. 

We have now to inform ourselves, as fully as the materials 
in our hands will admit, as to the actual connection and rela- 
tions between a parish and a church formed or existing within 
it, when the matter came up for judicial decision. We have 
seen that these relations had been regulated and disposed both 
by legal orders and by usages. The law had been frequently 
changed. The usages were traditional, embracing alike claims 
of right, reason, and courtesy. 

I am prompted by historic candor, as I have said, to admit 
a strong basis for the claims of prerogative and privilege set 
up by the church in the choice of a pastor. The claims were 
by inheritance. We have traced the origin of them in the 
first Christian age. There had been no break in the succes- 
sion in the assertion or the allowance of them down to the 



77 

date with which we are concerned. A fellowship of cov- 
enanted disciples, when brought into connection with those 
not pledged as they were, assumed special responsibilities. 
A church was the voluntary, spontaneous, earnest agency for 
upholding pious and sacred usages in a community. It 
charged itself with solemn and momentous obligations. By 
many offices and observances, by occasions of fasting, re- 
newals of its covenant, mutual reawakenings of its member- 
ship, and the quickening of zeal and labors, it constantly 
sought to reanimate and edify itself, and to be the medium of 
many benefits to a community. Well, therefore, might a 
church hold itself distinguished in privilege as to Christian 
institutions above the wholly unpledged members of a congre- 
gation or town parish, a proportion of whom might be indiffer- 
ent, chance attendants on preaching when they liked it, and 
often grudging their compulsory support of it. Thus stood 
the case at the crisis which we are reaching. 

In the parishes and churches to which the legal decision, as 
a precedent, was applicable, the relations stood as follows : 
The church had become an imperium in imperio, and the 
issue came to be raised whether it was supreme or subordi- 
nate. The parish was a body politic with consequent rights 
and obligations. It was compelled by a public proprietary 
tax to support a minister of religion for the inhabitants. The 
church was a self-constituted, self-perpetuating body, of both 
sexes, of minors and adults. It might have members who 
were not proprietors, not taxable in the parish. It might 
include servants transiently in the families. New-comers 
moving in from other towns, who were church members there, 
might commune by sufferance, though by usage expected to 
present a letter transferring relations. The church, not being 
incorporate, as was the parish, could not hold or transmit 
property in perpetuity. Its individual members had no trans- 
fer rights as pew holders or sharers in a fund. The church 
used the parish or the congregation as, so to speak, a feeder 
from which to add to its own membership. It was wholly for 
the members of the church, for the time being, to decide on 



78 

the terms and conditions for the admission of new members. 
These were an assent to a covenant, a confession of faith, and 
a profession of religious experience. These terms as con- 
cerning doctrinal beliefs might be free or rigid — they might 
from time to time be changed, reduced, relaxed. There might 
be devout and earnest men and women in a parish who were 
ready and even desirous to partake of church ordinances. If 
their consciences or convictions withheld them from assenting 
to certain doctrines or terms of the covenant, they could not 
become church members. If the number and weight of 
character of such persons induced the pastor and covenanted 
members to make the formulas of admission unobjectionable 
to them, they gladly availed of the privilege. 

We come now to the most delicate matter of our subject. 
From our historical review, thus far, we have seen how 
abundant were the occasions and materials for friction, for 
variance and contention in the relations between parishes and 
churches as regulated by law and usage. The choice and 
institution of a new minister might draw heavily upon them 
when there were preferences and partialities between different 
candidates. It was at the discretion of a candidate to keep 
aloof if he could see that there was to be contention about 
him. All that we have been concerned with thus far has 
related to a period in our church history when the congrega- 
tional body had all been in substantial accord with the 
Puritan, Calvinistic, orthodox system of doctrinal faith under 
which all our early churches were gathered and covenanted. 

But radical and very serious changes, modifications, and 
softenings of doctrinal belief had now come into the churches 
and furnished the occasion of division, acrimony, and strife. 
And here it is to be distinctly and emphatically noted that, 
though underlying and prompting the litigation to be referred 
to were doctrinal differences between the parties to it, the 
court did not and could not deal with the case with the 
slightest reference to or recognition of them. They were 
wholly waived and unnoticed. Not a plea nor an argument 
upon the right or the wrong, the truth or the error, the 



79 

legality or the illegality of religious opinions or beliefs came 
into the case. 

I repeat, the issue turned upon the legal rights — whatever 
might have been the developments of historic-traditional 
usage and prescription — which a body of covenanted church 
members, connected with a parish, had in the call and institu- 
tion of a minister, and in the control and disposal of parish 
and church property, such as the parsonage, ministerial lands, 
funds, plate, etc. 

No reference whatever was made to the mode in which this 
church was constituted, the terms of its covenant, the method 
of admission to it of new members from the congregation, or 
matters of creed or doctrine. It was even admitted in the 
issue opened between parish and church, in the case before us, 
that it was not raised with any reference to matters of doc- 
trinal belief. Yet none the less the prime occasion of the 
discord and dissension which then prevailed in the old Con- 
gregational churches of the State, and which made litigation 
and a judicial decision seemingly inevitable, was furnished in 
the changes and variances of doctrinal belief which had come 
to announce themselves and to find recognition alike among 
ministers, church members, and parishioners. 

These changes had come in gradually, quietly, and for a 
time unchallenged. They were at first undefined and not 
sharply asserted. But they proved, as they advanced, to be 
radical, threatening and burdened with matter of discord and 
strife. We define the issue sharply enough by saying, in the 
phrases of the time, that it was an alarming " defection " in 
the churches from their original basis of Calvinism or ortho- 
doxy, and a "decline" into a relaxed and vague form of so- 
called Liberalism. It is true such a process had been long 
advancing, and that the full recognition of its results could 
not but be attended with amazement, grief, alienation, and 
contention. 

We have seen what materials and occasions for variance 
there were between congregations and churches, as their 
relations were disposed by laws and usages — while as yet 



8o 



there were no questions opened in the communities which 
they represented in matters of doctrine. But when most 
serious and radical changes in doctrinal belief presented 
themselves for assertion and recognition, a wholly new 
element of strife came in with interminglings of passion and 
bitterness. 

I have intimated, ministers, church members, and 
parishioners were found to be divided and classified under 
the two parties, the old and the new, the orthodox and the 
liberal. By friendliness, neighborly regards, and tolerance, 
peace was for a while continued in many parishes. As there 
were known to be, in the congregations, men and women who 
were ready and desirous to share in church ordinances, but 
who shrank from the public relation of their religious 
experience or from the acceptance of the rigid doctrinal 
confession, if the minister and the church consented these 
terms might be relaxed by changing the matter of the 
covenant. If such change were resisted by the minister and a 
majority of the church, those of the congregation thus 
excluded from the ordinances would have their grievance. 
To this cause we must attribute jealousies and unfriendly 
relations between members of the congregation and the 
church in some parishes at that time. 

As ministers then had a life tenure of office, the election 
of a new minister was the occasion of calling out and intensi- 
fying differences which had been repressed. In cases, of 
which there were many, including the strongest old parishes 
in the State, in which minister, congregation, and church had 
shared in the relaxing of the original orthodox standard, the 
transition of the pastorate was peaceful. Such was the case 
in the First Church of Boston in its passage from Calvinism 
to Liberalism. There is not a word or a trace on its records 
of any shock or variance in the choice of its successive 
ministers in accordance with the views of those whom they 
were to serve. In the contemporary church and congregation 
of Charlestown, in the ferment of the controversy, the major- 
ity of the legal proprietors preferred the old standards. So 



8i 

the minority withdrew and instituted a new church and 
society. In Cambridge the majority of the parish took the 
liberal side in the choice of the minister, while the majority 
of the church dissented and set up another organization. 

The pastor of the First Church in Dedham had resigned 
to assume the presidency of a college, and in 1818 a successor 
was to be chosen. It appears that the changes in doctrinal 
opinion and belief, which had been working for many years in 
the Congregational societies of the State, had manifested 
themselves here. Under the pastorate of the minister pre- 
ceding him who had now retired, and who, in the phrase of 
the time, was classed among the so-called " Moderate," there 
had been modifications in the covenant and terms of admis- 
sion to the church, under which many persons who had 
shrunk from accepting the previous terms had come into 
communion. Among these was that honored patriot states- 
man, Senator Fisher Ames. The succeeding pastor, now 
retiring, had been regarded, by some at least of the parish, as 
of the same " moderate " views and temper on points then so 
sharply contested. But it proved as time went on that his 
convictions and preferences and sympathies were with the old 
beliefs. There was likely then to be a variance in preference 
in the choice of a new pastor. Cambridge and Andover were 
the sources for the supply of candidates. 

The parish here voting as legal proprietors, including of 
course both those who were and those who were not members 
of the church, by a majority of two thirds — representing four 
fifths of the taxable property of the town held by law to the 
support of the ministry — made choice of a Cambridge candi- 
date. The communicants meeting separately, after the par- 
ishioners, dissented from the choice. It was doubted and 
disputed at the time whether the dissentients were a majority 
or a minority of the actual membership of the church. The 
numbers on either side — subject afterwards to readjustment 
— seemed to stand, of male members, fourteen in favor of 
the candidate and eighteen in opposition. 

After the intensity of the variance was passed, a majority 



82 



of the church members appear to have retained their connec- 
tion with the parish and the new minister. But as the 
dissentients in the church claimed to be a majority, the letter- 
missive, summoning neighbor or sister churches, by pastors 
and delegates her in a council — after the prevailing 

usage of Congregationalism — for the ordination of the pastor- 
elect, could not go forth in the name of the " First ClmrcJi of 
Dedham." 

So the invitation went forth from the " First Parish of 
Dedham." Of course the dissentients urged that a minister 
thus instituted to office filled merely the legal requisition of 
"a preacher of morality and religion," and was not thereby 
ordained as pastor of the church. The church, therefore, a 
month afterward called a council of its own, which did little 
more than pronounce the proceedings of the parish council 
irregular, express sympathy with the aggrieved, and advise 
moderation. 

In the litigation which followed between the parties, for the 
sake of defining the legal question, the point was yielded that 
the dissent of the church was the expression of the majority 
of its members. There were at the time three deacons in 
office. One of these soon died; of the others, the junior 
remained with the parish; the senior one, who by law was the 
trustee of the parish and church property, of considerable 
value, withdrew, carrying his vouchers with him. Of this 
property it is to be said — as of similar funds in other towns 
— that it had long been gathering from various sources and 
donors, gifts from the town ami individuals — parsonage, lands, 
wood-lots, money, and church vessels. This deacon with the 
disaffected portion of the church claiming, as before said, to 
be a majority, and therefore entitled to hold the property, 
instituted a new fellowship and society and settled over them 
a pastor. This new pastor gives on his records, as " remon- 
strating " against the recent ordination of the minister of the 
First Parish, the names of ninety-five persons constituting, as 
he says, a majority of the church. Of these names twenty- 
four are of men and seventy-one are of women. The first 



83 

name is that of the pastor, whose resignation of the First 
Church and removal to another State, preceding the division, 
might seem to have released him from further responsibility 
in the case. How many of these names, men and women, 
were legal members of the parish it might be difficult to 
decide. Still, the allowance before the court was that they 
constituted the majority of the church. 

The portion of the church remaining with the parish 
removed the deacon who had withdrawn from it, and chose 
two new deacons, in whose name a suit was instituted against 
the retiring deacon for the recovery of the parish and church 
property from his trusteeship. 

It is interesting to note with what strict precision of rule 
and method the court, amid the intense excitement of the 
time — a more than local one — rigidly confined itself to the 
single point for adjudication. Not only, as has been said, 
were the underlying elements of contention wholly out of 
view, but there was reserve on other matters. The question 
was not adverted to of the doubtful elements of majority or 
minority between the parties ; nor were the sources of the 
property in contest, as derived from persons in or out of the 
church, referred to. The question recognized by the court 
was simply this : whether the claimants had been lawfully 
appointed deacons of the First Church ; that is, whether 
the body which had appointed them was by law the First 
Church. 

The decision of the court was as follows : 

" When the majority of the members of a Congregational church sepa- 
rate from the majority of the parish, the members who remain, although 
a minority, constitute the church in such parish and retain the rights and 
property belonging thereto." 

This legal decision would have been regarded as a mo- 
mentous one had it applied only to the single case then in 
hearing. But it was the establishment of a precedent which 
would dispose of all like cases then to be expected to present 
themselves in the troubles of the time between parishes and 



8 4 

the churches gathered within them. So far as it averted 
further litigation and induced a recourse to other methods of 

disposing of those like cases, it might be welcomed. The full 
purport of the decision was that the law did not recognize a 
church independently of its connection with the parish in 
which it was gathered, from which it might sever itself and 
carry property with it. Even the withdrawal of all the 
members of the church from the parish would leave free 
opportunity for a new church fellowship to be formed within 
the parish, which would accede to all the rights and property 
of the body that had retired. 

Such was the disposal of a contested issue which was made 
by the supreme legal tribunal of the State. Doubtless, ; 
lawyers all things are possible, there were lawyers then and 
there may be lawyers now who would dispute the decision. 
Those of us who are not lawyers would at least, as I myself 
certainly should, be diffident about any questioning or dis- 
cussing of it. But none the less, the decision caused a shock 
to the feelings and convictions of thousands in this com 
munity, of the most painful and exasperating character. 
Even were I to offer to you — as I shall not — extended rela- 
tions and quotations from the documents of the time, I should 
fail to reproduce in you the sentiments and passions, the 
dismay and the indignation roused in multitudes then living. 1 

After the brief historic reference which I have made to the 
traditions, usages, and statutes concerning the privileges and 
prerogatives of covenanted church bodies as connected with 
miscellaneous congregations, I need not attempt to account 
for the indignation and the deep sense of grievance and wrong 
excited among those who fondly clung to the old ways of piety 



1 Note. I quote bi one from the main impassioned outbursts from 

ill"' who felt outrag decision of the court It was made by Rev. Dr. 

h Pond, afterwards of the Theological Seminary of Bangor. " We call the 
proceeding by the hard name oi plunder. And we call upon the courts <>i Mas- 
to revoke these unrighteous decisions, and put the Congregational 
churches of the State upon their original and propei basis." — //</// Cen. of the 
l '/;.■. Conti • -. page 415- 



85 

here. I understand it, I appreciate it. Historically, as I 
have said, I sympathize with it. The sting of that legal de- 
cision was sharp and deep. Had it then come to this ! that 
the old churches of the fathers of the Puritan colony, the 
covenanted bodies, the elect religious fellowship, the pledged 
disciples of faith and piety, were the mere tenants on suffer- 
ance of the meeting-houses, the appanages of parishes, de- 
pendent upon them for roof and shelter, and upon the 
ministrations of teachers that might be set over them as 
pastors perhaps by unconverted tax-payers in the towns ? 
There was no disguising the fact that the decision availed 
to the countenance of the liberal or innovating party in the 
churches. 

But more than this, the decision, rightfully or not, was 
believed by very many sincere and earnest persons to be a 
grievous trespass upon vested rights sanctioned by usage, 
allowance, and law in the churches. It may be that we may 
find help towards an appreciation of the sense of wrong felt 
in this matter of religious interest by the aggrieved party by 
illustrating it, not from parallel, but from similar cases by the 
decision of the law in secular affairs. 

Soon after the recuperation following the Revolutionary 
War the Legislature of this State gave an exclusive, favorable, 
and perpetual charter to an incorporated company for what 
was then regarded as a stupendous enterprise. It was the 
building of the first bridge over the Charles, between Boston 
and Charlestown. It proved a safe and vastly profitable 
investment. Faithful trustees and guardians of the property 
of others, the sacred securities of widows and children, com- 
mitted to it their func's, purchasing the stock at a high 
premium, relying upon a pledged legal covenant. Some years 
afterwards, constraining reisons of business and convenience 
induced the Legislature to violate its own covenant and to 
charter a rival parallel bridge. Dismay and indignation for 
the old proprietors naturally followed. The case ran through 
all our courts, and the Supreme Court of the nation gave 
validity to the trespass. 



86 



A similar case presented itself of complaints of outrage of 
vested rights when the Legislature, by its charter of the 
Eastern Railroad, struck at the value of the property invested 
by a previous charter in the Salem turnpike. These are 
secular affairs. But we know well what intenser wraths 
may stir in heavenly spirits about sacred things. TanUc in 
ira; ? 

The difficulty of adjusting vested rights and institutions to 
changes of opinion in religion has been met in every age of 
developing civilization and knowledge. It is the province of 
a special department of civil law. Antiquated designations 
of trust funds have to be readjusted. The old Jewish syna- 
gogues and the Roman basilicas, with or without law, became 
Christian churches. At the Reformation millions of acres of 
land, cathedrals, churches, universities, schools, and uncounted 
sums of endowed benevolences, the monuments of Roman 
Catholic piety, were made over by Parliament to Protestant- 
ism. Hoards of wealth, yielding its proceeds to the English 
Church, were originally consecrated for the saying of 
masses for the repose of departed souls. What a disquieted 
and restless place that purgatory must have been conceived 
to be, when such wealth and intercession were needed to 
bring peace to its inmates! 

Calvin found no qualms of conscience in preaching in the 
old Roman Cathedral at Geneva, and I have myself attended 
upon Unitarian ministrations there. But Protestantism, as I 
said at the start, has always been amazed and shocked by 
developments natural and inevitable from its own first princi- 
ples. And so the law took away from our old churches the 
privileges which it had once granted to them. 

We need pursue our subject no further than to take note of 
the fact that the law, as law, may have led the way to what 
has become the most marked characteristic of our time in the 
order and conduct of our religious institutions. The legal 
decision, without any such intent, but none the less effectively, 
did tend to discredit the old historic relation between a cov- 
enanted sacramental body and the congregation within which 



87 

it was gathered. The law seemed to intimate this : You must 
keep the teaching of religion and morality in a parish distinct, 
as the prior and paramount object, from the concerns of an 
inner fellowship for some special observances of its own. 

Has not this had the effect of throwing into the shadow 
the church bodies in our old congregations ? Certain it is 
that in no one of those congregations, however closely it 
might abide by the old standards of faith, would the church 
for one moment think of inducting a minister without having 
made sure first of the approval of the society. Nor is this 
all. We have in these days of ours, here and around us, 
become wonted to a state of things which may be regarded, 
from one point of view, as a recognition of the noblest 
religious liberalism, independently of all bonds of creed and 
covenant. 

Among us especially, here and now, and largely elsewhere, 
religious institutions, methods, and benevolences are sus- 
tained — yes, I will say it — most generously and heartily 
sustained by those who are not committed by any personal 
pledge, creed, or covenant — even by many whose modesty or 
conscience would lead them to shrink from assuming the 
Christian name. Still they may have read or heard the 
words, " Ye are my disciples if ye do the things which I have 
commanded you." 

Political, military, and religious conflicts constitute in 
history the larger and the most exciting portion of its records. 
While they are passing they engage one class of feelings and 
passions. The review of th,em by wise and calm reflection is 
more favorable to sober judgment. Our minds are capable, 
if we will so train them, of a degree of impartiality. In 
reviewing the local though intense dissension which we have 
sought calmly to apprehend, of course we cannot look for 
harmony and accord of opinion. 

Yet a reasonable candor may prompt the friends and 
sympathizers with the party aggrieved by the legal decision 
to allow for the practical embarrassments with which it huxx 
to deal. The real root of the difficulty was this : the church 



88 

had failed to draw in or to retain, as it once did, the majority of 
the legal members of a parish. Indeed, in many cases the 
membership of the church was but a small minority of the 
parish. Certain feelings, prepossessions, prejudices, unsym- 
pathetic and even repelling, had made a connection with it 
unattractive to considerable numbers of persons. The com- 
municants too were disproportionately women, who were not 
voters in business affairs. 

As we have seen, the seceders from this parish were 
seventy-one women and twenty-four men. Had women voted 
there might have been direct antagonism with their husbands. 
Under the circumstances, constituted as a church was, it 
could hardly have been expected that even if all its members 
were of one mind the parish would yield to them the choice 
of a minister. If in this or in any other society the church 
had embraced a majority of the legal members of the parish, 
there would have been no occasion for an appeal to the law. 
It would then have been for dissatisfied communicant and 
non-communicant members to withdraw, as in some cases 
they did. 

But why could not a church seceding by a positive 
majority of its members carry with it church property? The 
reason for denying that, as of right, seems to have been that 
that property was of a very miscellaneous character, not 
admitting of discrimination in its parts. It might have been 
long accumulating from the town treasury, from individuals, 
and joint contributors. It had always been identified with 
and used in common by the local central place of worship for 
the parish. The funeral bier and pall, the meeting-house, the 
parsonage, the ministerial lands, charity funds, the baptismal 
font and other sacred vessels, had been held and transmitted 
through that parish, and must through it go down to the 
succession. The church members might have the benefit of 
it but could not transfer it. 

I have sought with candor and impartially to do justice to 
that feeling of amazement and protest which followed the 
adjudication subordinating an old Congregational church to a 



8 9 

parish. The same spirit of candor requires that a word be 
said on the side of those who approved the decision as under 
the circumstances of the time right and reasonable. It was 
judged by them as not just that the affairs and the funds of a 
parish should be controlled by a self-constituted body of 
church members, few or many, formed within it. There are 
many evidences in our records that in several old parishes a 
grudge or jealousy was long perpetuated from the restriction 
of the civil franchise to church members. The relative 
numbers of the communicants had been steadily decreasing 
in many parishes. To have retained its power the church 
should have retained its weight of influence. In some cases 
it did not. Had there been in a church a steady, strengthen- 
ing growth in numbers and in the character of its members 
to secure the respect and confidence of a community, there 
would have been no lack of deference to it. 

It would be safe to say, historically, that the church 
members in a town were generally the more exemplary and 
estimable of its people. But all were not such, and the free, 
inquisitorial spirit of our community was critical in such 
matters. Meanwhile it was undeniable that equally estimable 
and exemplary persons in a parish could not or would not 
pass the ordeal of admission to a church. The issue, in the 
view of such persons, then became a plain one ; it was 
whether the owning of a covenant and the partaking of an 
ordinance should secure in a parish the same exclusive right 
which it once had in citizenship. Subsequent legislation has 
put it fully within the power of corporate covenanted religious 
bodies to hold their funds securely. 



EVENING SERVICES 



AT THE 



First Congregational Meeting- House, 



b xv b 



DEDHAM, MASS 



1888. 



93 



INTRODUCTORY REMARKS 

By DON GLEASON HILL, Esq. 



This afternoon we were welcomed to the place on which 
stood the first meeting-house erected by the church the first 
gathering of which, 250 years ago, we meet today to cele- 
brate, and on which ever since has stood the meeting-house of 
the first parish. It is a spot we all revere, whether we are 
accustomed to worship there or not. 

This evening we are pleased to welcome you to another 
place, also full of pleasant memories of the past; to the 
hearthstones of the first five pastors of the church ; for near 
this spot stood the house of John Allin, which was also 
occupied by his successor, Mr. Adams. Here also Mr. Bel- 
cher, the third minister, built his house, which was afterwards 
occupied by his successors, Dexter and Haven, the fourth 
and fifth ministers, and in which they all died. 

In 1 8 19 the house was taken down to make room for this 
house of worship ; so that while the public worship of the 
church was on the other side of the street, it was here those 
reverend and faithful ministers of the Dedham church labored 
and prayed for the good of their people ; here by the help of 
God they prepared those remarkable discourses, remarkable 
not only in length but also in substance. Surely this also is 
hallowed ground. 

For two days now we almost seem to have been living in 
the days of our ancestors. It is true, as we look about us, 
everything seems changed. The little meeting-house, 36 x 20 
feet and 12 feet high (about the size of the choir gallery, only 
about five feet longer and four feet wider) — this has been 
enlarged. The pits, as the great square pews were called, 



94 

have disappeared. The elders and deacons no longer occupy 
the front pews provided expressly for them. Instead of the 
audience room being occupied by grave men with curled mus- 
taches and long tufts of beard depending from the chin, on 
one side, and the equally grave matrons in their scarlet hoods 
and cloaks, on the other, with the boys and girls in separate 
galleries, all is changed; and in place thereof we find a 
strange commingling of men, women, and children all over 
the house. 

The tithing man, the pay for whose services was equal to 
that even of the deputy to the General Court, has disappeared. 
Now the elders must do their own errands; the parents must 
be responsible for the deportment of their own children ; and 
if by any chance a stray dog should find its way into the 
meeting-house, no one is now officially responsible for its 
ejection. 

We look in vain for the familiar watch-tower upon the little 
school-house beside the meeting-house ; it's gone. Instinct- 
ively almost we listened yesterday, as the hour of service 
approached, for the sound of the drum of Ralph Day, calling 
the people to the house of worship. For this service the 
town granted him in 1646 20 shillings in cedar boards ; but 
the last account we had of this drum was in the will of the 
drummer : " I give unto my son, Ralph Day, my drum and all 
the belongings thereto." The sermons yesterday, however, 
as regards length, seemed quite natural. It seems a little 
strange when the collector makes his periodical calls upon us 
for the pew-rent, but we are told the minister's salary must be 
paid — for good old John Allin had no salary, and depended 
upon the voluntary contributions of the people and the liberal 
free giants of land ; and at his death he was the greatest 
land-holder in the town with one exception, and that was Dea- 
con Chickering. 

But there is one thing, however, to which I hope you can 
all testify today — that we have not brought into disrepute 
the reputation of our ancestors. In an account of New Eng- 
land written about 1660 by Samuel Maverick, one of the first 



95 

white men who ever settled on these shores, the MS. of which 
was found a few years ago in the British Museum, Dedham is 
thus described: "On Charles River stands the Towne of 
Dedham, about eight miles either from Boston or Roxbury ; a 
very pleasant place. In this Towne liveth many bisquett 
Makers and Butchers." 

But these are trivial things when compared with the impor- 
tant event we are now celebrating. Who can calculate the 
benefits which this nation owes to the establishment of these 
churches early in every settlement throughout the colony ? 
Dr. Ellis says, in the preface to his Puritan Age : "It may 
safely be affirmed that proportionally more pages have been 
written and put into print concerning the early history of 
Massachusetts, including the commonwealth, the municipali- 
ties which constitute it, the incidents and events, the men and 
the institutions identified with it, than those concerning any 
other like portion of the earth's territory." 

But still, we are always delighted to hear the story ; we have 
certainly enjoyed all that has thus far been said yesterday and 
today, and are glad that there is still more in store for us 
from the learned men who are to address us this evening. 
Among the names in the past history of the town and church 
which we delight to honor is that of the fourth minister. 
Tonight we have with us one bearing his surname ; and while 
we cannot greet him as a direct descendant of the Rev. Sam- 
uel Dexter, yet as a portion of the community for whose 
instruction and entertainment he has labored with voice and 
with pen, we can greet him as appreciative pupils of a faithful 
instructor; and I take great pleasure in introducing the Rev. 
Henry M. Dexter, D.D. 



96 



ADDRESS BY REV. HENRY M. DEXTER, D. D. 



LOOKED at in one way, and that the ordinary way, these 
two hundred and fifty years which stand between us and the 
event which we commemorate, seem to be a long while; so 
clouded with the mists of the centuries as to make it almost 
hopeless sharply to identify those minute particulars in which 
real interest lies. Looked at in another way the seeming 
is different. Let us suppose a bright lad of ten years, with 
quick eye and attentive ear, to have taken in all the details ot 
that simple yet impressive service of two centuries and a half 
ago, in which, among others who shared the exercises, must 
undoubtedly have been John Wilson, of Boston, of whom an 
eminent personage said, as he was leaving old England : 
" New England shall flourish as long as that good man 
liveth in it;"' and John Cotton, of the same First Church 
in Boston, who was called " the Cato of his age for his 
gravity " — " that had a glory with it which Cato had not ; " ' 
and John Eliot, of Roxbury, to be gratefully and graciously 
remembered forever as the apostle of the Indians ; and 
Richard Mather, of Dorchester, solid father of an illus- 
trious family; and the rudely eloquent Hugh Peter, of 
Salem, who went home again in 1641 to take a large 
re in the tumults of the time, and lose his head at Char- 
Cross as a regicide; and Samuel Whiting, of Lynn, of 
whom Cotton Mather said that " his very countenance had an 
ible smile continually sweetning of ' it;" and Thomas Cob- 
bet, of the same church, of whom the same quaint chronicler 



dia, iii, 47. * Magnalia, iii, 28. Magnalia, iii, 159. 



97 

declared that " that golden chain one end whereof is tied to 
the tongue of man, the other end unto the ear of God (which 
is as just, as old, a resembling of prayer), our Cobbet was 
always pulling at " ' — let us, I say, suppose our lad to have 
been impressed with these men, and what they did and said, 
and to have lived to the not uncommon age of 95, and, 
before his death in 1723, to have recounted the scene and its 
actors, as vividly as he could, to his grandson of ten years. 
Let us suppose this second lad also to have lived to be 95, 
and before his death, in 1808, to have told the story, with its 
most striking particulars, to his grandson of ten years. And 
let us suppose this third lad — and he would now be only 90 
years of age — to be here tonight, and to stand up, in his hale 
and hearty maturity, to relate to us what his graiidfathcr told 
him he heard from his grandfather, who was present ! So the 
immeasurable and hazy distance shrinks into just a period of 
three moderately extended lifetimes ; which a little patience 
and a little faith, where records are scant, can see through. 

I propose, now, that we slip out of that 36-feet log meeting- 
house, with its thatched roof, into one of the low dwellings 
(we will say that of Goodman — soon to be Captain, and by 
and by Major — Eleazer Lusher) which stands, not without 
a certain rude picturesqueness, not far away among the strag- 
gling forest trees, and accept its hearty welcome to a stool 
before the roaring fire which at once brightens and warms its 
interior, possibly the more grateful from the fact that, for six 
weeks of this October and November of 1638, there had been 
"scarce two days without rain or snow," a circumstance which 
the weather-wise ones attributed to an earthquake on the 10th 
of June previous. 2 Capt. William Peirce, of the good ship 
Lyon, had a few days before arrived at Nantasket with pas- 
sengers, 3 and we will suppose that one of them, a thoughtful 
person meditating where to cast his lot, has joined himself to 
Mr. Cotton and the Boston delegation, and slipping in with us, 



1 Magnalia, iii, 166. 2 Winthrop's Journal, i, 331, 31S. 

3 Winthrop's Journal, i, 330. 



9 8 

asks Captain Lusher a few natural questions. We will let 
the two do the talking. 

Guest: You must bewelLnigh to the end of the land here; 

t lie trees be thick, and the ways tan/Jed. 

Host: Nay, Concord, which is twice farther from the salt 
sea toward the northwest, is of like age with us, and the trail 
for the Connecticut leads straight on from this spot many 
days' journey to the west. Godly Mr. Hooker with his com- 
pany — driving 160 neat cattle — went this way thither from 
Newtown two summers ago. ' 

Guest : How many settlements do you count in this land? 

Host : There be two-and-twenty completed with the church 
and its ordinances: to wit, Plymouth, eldest of all — with 
Duxbury and Marshfield, and Taunton of the same Old Col- 
ony, the nighest of which it takes near two days of heavy woods 
walking and river-fording to reach. 2 Then there are, in our 
Bay Colony, Salem, and Boston, and Watertown, and Roxbury, 
and Charlestown, and Sagus, and Newtown, and Ipswich, and 
Newbury, and Weymouth, and Hingham, and Concord, and 
Dorchester, and this Dedham. Then there is Mr. Pynchon's 
settlement remote in the Indian country beyond the Nipmuks ; 
and Windsor and Hartford, making the colony on the Connec- 
ticut ; and Dover far away along the coast to the northeast. 

Guest : Hoiv many dwell in these churches and plantations ? 

Host: Questionless, it is hard to tell. We have but scant 
knowledge of many whom the ships have brought; disease 
has been severe, and sometimes, with our meager outfit, heavy 
exposures, and lack of leeches, grievously fatal ; and many 
have pushed through us on to remoter settlements. But, to 
our best thought, there must be over one thousand believers 
covenanted together in these two-and-twenty churches, and 
say five-and-twenty or thirty thousand people altogether. 

Guest: Are these several plantations easy of mutual access 
in case of need ? 

Host: Without being many miles apart, they are still, it 



1 Winthrop's Journal, i, 223. ' Winthrop's Journal, i, no. 



99 



must be confessed, rather far asunder. The wilderness 
crowds us on every hand — crowds us apart. Not so very long 
ago our honorable Governor Winthrop 1 was at his farm-house 
at Mystic — and that would be perhaps half way from Boston 
to Medford — and, taking his gun in hand (should he see a wolf), 
went out for a little after-supper walk. It suddenly fell dark, 
and he missed the path, and became hopelessly bewildered. 
Coming at length to a deserted Indian wigwam, he made shift 
to build a fire, in the comfort of which he sang psalms, and so 
spent the night. In the early morning a vagrant squaw, 
whose quarters he seems to have usurped, put in an appear- 
ance, but soon left, whereat the Governor made the best use 
of the dawn in finding the way and hurrying home, to be told 
that his servants had passed ten hours of excitement and 
alarm, shouting and firing guns, although he heard them not. 
And, a few months later, a serving-maid of good Mr. Skelton, 
the Salem pastor, going out for a little ramble in the direction 
of Sagus, was lost seven days, all the while wandering between 
the two places without food, save such as the bushes afforded, 
or shelter; until at last, weary and surbated, she blundered 
back to the spot whence she had departed ; and, not being of 
so poor stock as some sisters, " she soon recovered and did 
well, through the Lord's wonderful providence." 2 

Guest : Are you all lodged under logs with a sedgy top here ? 

Host : Mostly, both at home and in the temple of God. In 
Charlestown the church availed of a great house builded 
beforehand for another purpose. But in Boston, as in most 
towns, a log hut, or a cabin of piled stones, with chinks 
daubed smooth with clay mud and covered in with thatch, 
shelters pastor and teacher and flock ; while some, as in 
Sagus, 3 are content to dig down a few feet in some natural 
hollow, and thus find warmth with less labor of outside walls, 
stepping down a few steps to the earth floor, and sitting there 



1 Winthrop's Journal, i, 74. 2 Winthrop's Journal, i, 118. 

. 3 Lewis and Newhall's Lynn, 139. 

L. of C. 



IOO 



upon long slabs each standing upon four wooden legs — the 
men ranged <»n one side of the entrance, and the women on 
the other. And many have been the sweet exercises which 
the Lord's people in their blessed freedom therein enjoy — 
beyond all which the great churches and cathedrals from 
whence they came ever offered them. 

Guest : Has the Church of God, in its new way, entered here 
into peace? I bethink me of rumors of controversies, as yet 
unsubdued, which ha ed my ears. 

Host : Ah — well ! " Infandum, amice, jubes renovare dolo- 
rem." You have hit me in a sore spot, friend. No doubt you 
remember how on the day in the time of the patriarch Job, when 
the children of God came to present themselves before the Lord, 
that Satan came also among them.' A like thing, verily, hath 
happened unto us. Divers foul errors have been brought in 
hither by strange brethren (and sisters) who have taken 
advantage of their opportunities. Some of these shameless 
persons are not slow to teach abominable dogmas, to wit : 
that there is no inherent righteousness in a child of God; 2 
that neither absolute nor conditional promises belong to a 
Christian ; that, as a rule, we are not bound by the law ; that 
the Sabbath is but as other days ; that the soul is mortal till 
it be united to Christ ; and that there is no resurrection of 
the body; and the like profligate and devilish notions. Cap- 
tain Underbill but a few weeks ago, without a blush, declared 3 
that he had lain under a spirit of bondage and a legal way five 
years, and could get no assurance, till at length, as he was 
taking a pipe of tobacco, the spirit set home an absolute 
promise of free grace with such assurance and joy as he never 
since doubted of his good estate, nor should he, though he 
should fall into sin. Good endeavor, I can assure you, has 
been taken to correct all this. A Synod of all the teaching 
elders of the country was held at Newtown last year which 
condemned "eighty opinions, some blasphemous, others 



1 Job, ii, i. a Winthrop's Journal, i, 304. ' Winthrop's Journal, i, 324. 



101 

erroneous, and all unsafe, which were afloat among us." 1 The 
diet of this assembly, which lasted four-and-twenty days, was 
provided at the country's charge, as also the fetching and 
sending back of those members who came from Connecticut ; 2 
and, since then, some of the worst of these opinionated offend- 
ers have been sent out of the country ; and the afflicted 
churches have dealt with divers of their members, and spent 
many days in public meetings to bring them to see their sin 
in their corrupt opinions ; and proving ill able to prevail with 
their cursed obstinacy, have been compelled to cast them 
out. 

But for this — I will be frank with thee, stranger — but for 
this, all would be well here. It is a goodly country, and plenty 
of old English hard work will subdue the forests, and we shall 
by and by have the best comforts of civilization, even where all 
is now so bare. But, as a great light in a summer's night sets 
all manner of bugs, and beetles, and bumbles to buzzing into it, 
so because we have got here churches without a bishop, and 
the beginnings of a State with a king a good way off, the 
addle-pated and the sour-hearted, and the hubbub-makers, are 
all rushing hither — Familists, Antinomians, Anabaptists, 
and Quakers, and the Lord only knows what beside — but 
they do say that the eye of the Jesuits is even already on us 
here. While godly Mr. Cotton this afternoon was exercising 
in regard to this being a new church whose beginning we 
could see, but the end of which would be the other side of the 
millennium, Satan tempted me to say within myself : " I fail 
to behold. If things go the way they are going, I prophesy 
that fifty years from now, or, to be well within bounds and 
make assurance doubly sure, five times fifty years ', will see here 
the curse of Edom [Isaiah xxxiv : n, 14] ; and 'the pelicane 
and the hedge-hogge shall possesse it, and the great owle and 
the rauen shall dwell in it, and hee shall stretch out vpon it 
the line of vanitie and the stones of emptinesse. There shall 



1 Winthrop's Journal, i, 284. 2 Winthrop's Journal, i, 288. 



102 

meete also Ziim and Jim? and the SStyre shall eric to his 
fellow, and the schrich-owl shall rest there, and shall find for 
herself a quiet dwelling; for the Lord hath a sacrifice in 
Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Edom.' " 

Guest: But, Goodman Lusher, you must have faith — and 
works 710 less. 

Host: Granted the faith: what works can avail for such 
exigencies ? 

Beloved: Five times fifty years completed their cycle on last 
Saturday night; and if Goodman Lusher could take his guest 
by the arm and walk in hither, and see what we see, and listen 
to what we hear, and cognize what we know, would they find 
the church here, or the menagerie t A good deal of the former, 
surely, with possibly some hint and suggestion of the latter, 
within recognizable distance (by the help of the Sunday Her- 
ald). We should have an interesting time, opening up to the 
Captain our growth and our grandeur; pointing out a good 
many differences between Dedham and Massachusetts as he 
saw them last, and as we see them now ; explaining to him 
the marvelous convenience of our railroads and tramways, 
our steamships, our factories, our labor-saving machines for 
agriculture, our elevators and excavators, our telegraphs and 
telephones, and gas and electric lights and motors, and all 
our modern advancements; until, doubtless, we should so 
amaze him, that, after he had resumed confidence in the evi- 
dence of sense, he would say : " Ah, well ! you ought, with all 
this to help, you ought easily for yourselves and your fellows, 
and for God, to do more in one week than, in our meager 
time, we could bring about in a whole year. Doubtless you do ! 
And what a glorious thing it must be to live under such 
conditions that every pound of force with which a man strikes 
at anything shall weigh a ton by the time it hits ! But 
let me ask," he says, "about the kingdom of God; surely that 



1 " Which were either wilde beasts, or foules, or wicked spirits, whereby 
Satan deluded man, as by the fairies, goblins, and such like fantasies." — Genevan 

Version. 



103 

must have come, or nearly so, among you ? Is this the mil- 
lennium f" 

I am afraid we should make a sudden jump to the photo- 
graph, or some other as yet unstated wonder, and insist 
upon explaining that, while we inwardly kept up a terrible 
thinking just how best to answer this abrupt and unlooked-for 
inquiry. And I suppose that, after due reflection, it would be 
needful for us to explain that Satan does not yet appear to 
have ceased from " going to and fro in the earth, and from 
walking up and down in it," and that we have a few remaining 
errors, " some blasphemous, others erroneous, and all unsafe," 
which linger still among us ; so that not only the millennium 
hasn't come, but things often look exceeding dark to a sensi- 
tive eye. 

And then, perhaps, the guest would throw out once more his 
kindly suggestion: " You must have faith — and works no less." 

To which might we not borrow Goodman Lusher's reply : 
"Granted the faith — what works do such exigencies demand?" 

That is the question with which, brethren, you confront the 
beginning of your sixth half-century of church life and work. 
God help you to answer it well ! 



104 



ADDRESS BY REV. DR. ELLIS. 



After the generous share of attention you gave me this 
afternoon, I hardly think myself entitled to take more of your 
time. In my mature years of thinking I have come to regret 
deeply the rupture in the Congregational Church. There 
were noble men in both factions ; they should have remained 
together. I know of no law forbidding a husband and wife 
who have separated from coming together again. There must 
be a reconciliation. Sometimes the children aid in bringing 
this about. But if this cannot be done, and if worst comes to 
worst and no reconciliation can be effected, I think that the 
surviving party should be entirely willing respectfully to attend 
the funeral of the other. 



io5 



ADDRESS OF REV. ALEX. McKENZIE, D. D. 



I am willing to be indebted for the privilege of standing 
here tonight to my ministerial descent from Thomas Shepard. 
He was here the friend and companion of John Allin, though 
Mr. Allin was his senior by nine years. When the divines in 
England presented their " nine petitions " to their New Eng- 
land brethren the rejoinder was written by John Allin and 
Thomas Shepard, and was marked by their ability and wisdom. 
The two men belong together. 

You do well to preserve here the name and renown of your 
first minister. Last year I went from London to Towcester in 
Northamptonshire, that I might visit Shepard's birthplace. I 
found the church to which he was taken in his childhood. I 
saw the font from which he was baptized and the record of his 
baptism. I visited the school-house beside the church and 
brought away a part of a bench on which he may have sat. 
But I found no recollection of him; not the courteous vicar of 
the parish, nor the learned druggist and antiquary of the vil- 
lage, nor the most distinguished possessor of the name, had 
any knowledge of Towcester's most illustrious son. John 
Allin's birthplace may have forgotten him. Here he will be 
remembered. 

Yet England may well cherish the names and the deeds of 
the men who made the New England. It is high testimony 
to the excellence of her nurture that her children were able to 
make another England. We confess with thankfulness our 
inheritance and are grateful that honor has been done to the 
English name. 

They came as men and women. They brought England 



io6 

with them, so much as could be borne across the seas. They 
could not bring cathedrals, but they brought the spirit of 
them ; the Bible, the Lord's day, the worship, and the hallowed 
influences abide ever in their lives. They could not bring the 
colleges ; but they brought scholars and books, the love of 
learning, the ability to enlarge and impart it. They had been 
born into the English history and the English life; they knew 
the great names of antiquity ; they were familiar with the 
great events of the centuries, of the materials which consti- 
tute a state; they brought far more than they left, and their 
courage, devotion, force, and all which belongs with manhood. 

We pay them our homage as we attempt to reproduce their 
works. We copy their architecture. Their high-backed 
chairs, their tables and table ware, are among our treasures, 
and their spinning-wheel graces our drawing-room. We are 
following them in weightier matters. At length we are deal- 
ing kindly and justly by the Indian. They began with this. 
They gave them preachers, churches, schools, books, and dig- 
nified their desire by the Indian college. We have freed 
ourselves from slavery at a late day and at a terrible cost. 
Since 1641, three years from the founding of this church, there 
has not been a slave born in Massachusetts. 

We are trying to regulate citizenship, and with very little 
satisfaction. It was their early thought. We have not 
improved their thought, that the good man is the good citizen, 
and that in his hands the state is safe. Their test of civic 
virtue would not suit our times, but their principle was right 
and our endeavors should reach towards it. 

They believed in the greatness of their mission. Familiar 
with the prophecies of the Scriptures, they believed that they 
were called to help in their fulfillment, and this purpose gave 
strength and meaning to their work. Liberty advanced in 
their hands, and they founded colonies which by the force within 
them became a nation. We look unto yet greater enlarge- 
ment; we believe that the English-speaking people are to be 
preeminent among the nations and that their chief seat will be 
in the land we call our own. The vision is vast and inspiring. 



107 

It is well if we refuse to try experiments, and keep to the 
methods which have achieved success. The country must have 
to the end what it had in the beginning — the Bible, the church, 
the school, the Sabbath. We are requiring and reasserting 
some things which have been proved. On the front of the 
Harvard Law School is a sentence from Moses, and on the 
wall above the diplomas and degrees of the university is a 
sentence from Daniel. John Allin and Thomas Shepard would 
have approved the choice. We should continue to write the 
story, words which the fathers knew and obeyed, where the 
children will read them, where they will help to guide the reason 
and conscience and life of men. Our doors are open wide and 
the nations are entering in. Let them come, but let them learn 
on the threshold the wisdom of the founders, the maxims and 
methods of their work. Then may the work of their hands be 
established upon them, and that for which they wrought and 
prayed be the strength of the nation, the glory of the land. 

It is well that you come together here around these high 
purposes. To you is intrusted a common work, and services 
like these help to its accomplishment. We are one in faith 
and trust, in earnestness and love, and look for the dawning of 
the day which shall reward your hope and crown the fathers 
with delight. 

" Then shall His glorious church rejoice 
His word of promise to recall : 
The sheltering fold, the Shepherd's voice, 
The God and Father over all." 



io8 



ADDRESS BY REV. JONATHAN EDWARDS. 



Mr. President and friends : After all these fine intellectual 
viands so amply served to you during these two memorable 
days, you will have little appetite left for the simple dish I 
bring you to add (if it could add) to your already abundant 
feast. I will say that you have developed an extraordinary 
capacity for disposing of addresses ; and have become so used 
to pressing out in all weather (as on this stormy night) that 
now your ministers will not be able to keep you back and may 
expect all their services to be full. 

The thought that impresses me is in line with the idea just 
now given in the always fascinating speech of my brother (Dr. 
McKenzie), when he said that "the Puritan trusted wife and 
children on no vessel he had not tried, and fired no gun till he 
had tested it." This is practical good sense. The nearer I 
come to them the less I wonder that the Pilgrim and Puritan 
are still the historian's theme, the orator's inspiration, and the 
poet's song. For surely a peculiar people they were, and in 
nothing more than in this: the remarkable mixture, in our first 
settlers, of sturdy sound sense with the most profound religious 
vi o fives. 

Not this uncommon one quality, nor that, or even class of 
qualities; but the mingling ol what might seem unlike or even 
opposites. They lived — practically, diligently, vigorously — 
in this world, and took good care of it while they stayed here ; 
but they lived, with their might, for the world above and 
beyond, as seeing the invisible. There have been many of 
keen vision and strong hand, but altogether of this world and 
of no more. Then there have not been wanting lofty and 



109 

meditative souls, of great aspirings, but recluses on the very 
sphere they are appointed for the present to inhabit. But 
these men were large enough to take in both worlds. They 
did not despise time, but they did not forget eternity. It was 
this combination of qualities that distinguished the men who 
began our towns and churches. 

This first settler in 1638 had not the Dedham of 1888, 
remember, to deal with. He had the big trees to handle, and 
the rocks to dig out, and the first roads to make, and the 
rough, tough, intractable soil to sweeten. And he could do it. 
He knew a sharp axe, and a good ox, and the points of a 
horse. See that toiler bending over plow or mattock. It 
takes all his muscle ; but if you could look within you would 
see that he is wrestling with the great problems of existence. 
Follow him to his hard-won church, or to the conference with 
his spiritual brothers, to his family prayer, or to the closet of 
his deep private communion with God, and you find this stout 
farmer, trader, mechanic, soldier, is at once the simple and the 
heroic child of faith in heart. 

If their view around sometimes seems to have been rather 
confined, they could look straight up. As from down deep in 
a well men have been said to see the stars, they did look from 
earth farther into heaven than most. 

Of this blended sagacity and faith, the wives and mothers 
in the early parsonages and homes were a marked example. 
Out of those homes came the sons that crowned the church 
and the state, and all the various walks of life. Such were 
the famous lawyers like Sam. Dexter, from the minister's 
family in Dedham ; the Chief Justice Theophilus Parsons, from 
the country parsonage in Byfield ; the great merchant and 
the founders of academies and seminaries, from the Phillips 
parsonage in Andover ; and how many more whose names are 
an honor and a treasure. 

None had more to lose than the Pilgrim women who left 
their fair English hedgerows and flowers and homes behind. 
The picture we have seen of a lone girl standing on the bleak 
Massachusetts sands, shading her eyes with her hand as she 



no 



gazes wistfully after the retreating vessel, homeward bound 
towards the English coast, in which she could not and would 
not go, is but a true picture of a life that must have been 
lonely indeed if it had not enjoyed the ever-present God and 
Father to cheer its daily and constant toil. Hence came the 
practice of the homely virtues in plain lives, and at the very 
same time, in the very same persons, the high resolve. Hence 
their ability to cope with the violence of the first century here, 
in the savage era. Hence the spirit that came down from 
their ancestry to the patriot men and women of the Revolu- 
tion. And from the same source, descending in the blood, 
five-and-twenty years ago, the bravery that carried the flag of 
freedom with some of your own sons on the heights of Gettys- 
burg. 

In our time I have thought your pastor of forty years was a 
good instance of this mingled earthly and heavenly wisdom. 
As we were told last night, Dr. Burgess, the sedate preacher 
and earnest Christian scholar, was also a practical man of 
affairs. He was skillful for the emergencies of every-day 
living. The student of the Bible was also founder and presi- 
dent of your savings bank. He would have his young men 
learn to save their wages, that they might have something for 
benevolent giving, as he did. It was good Christian sense 
that made him such a model parishioner after he had been 
pastor — a model I always respected and admired for the 
unfailing courtesy and unceasing kindness with which the 
retired pastor welcomed and sustained and blessed his suc- 
cessor. 

This union of business with deep religious motives appears, 
perhaps as thoroughly as anywhere, in those heritors of the 
ancestral desire for the coming of God's kingdom — our Chris. 
Han missionaries, true descendants of the Pilgrim fathers and 
mothers, both in pluck and piety. These two streams — of 
caring rightly for the world God has given us here, and of fit- 
ting ourselves and others for the grander life beyond — flowed 
on, in our first settlers, into one harmonious and exalted life, 
fertilizing the waste places it touched. That stream of 



Ill 



mingled virtues has made home and church. It has now 
rolled on out of sight, lost in the great ocean of God's eternal 
love beyond. 

The hymn we have just been singing, written by a loyal 
son of our Pilgrim sires, expresses this mingling of the two 
worlds' life and power — the mixture of a sturdy practical 
sense and its fruits with the most profound religious motives. 

" Laws, freedom, truth, and faith in God, 
Came with those exiles o'er the sea; 
And where their pilgrim feet have trod, 

The God they trusted guards their graves." 



I 12 



ADDRESS BY REV. BENJAMIN H. BAILEY. 



Such is the commanding character of the men whom we 
this day celebrate that we almost feel that they belonged to 
their own time and age, and with that time and age had 
passed away. But the blessing and the worth of such an 
anniversary as this lie in the fact that the energy of the 
founders of church and state, the Puritan character such as 
we remember, are self-perpetuating. They cannot, in reality 
of power, be elsewhere in history more than here and now. 
They are to be here, to continue here their progressive force, 
their elevating influence, till time shall end. 

I behold a picture of the Puritan as I recall that intrepid 
soldier of the cross, who for forty years went in and out before 
this people as " king and priest " of the Lord — a noble figure 
of the earlier time. Nor can I ever forget the beloved friend 
who stood in his appointed place across the way, to declare 
the glad tidings of the Spirit, the great hopes of the soul ; the 
Christian scholar, the faithful servant of the living God. 
Words fail me to speak worthily of that father of the faith who 
counselled and guided me in my early ministry here, until he 
passed on to his unending reward. Men like these, in spirit 
and purpose one with the founders, have helped to make this 
community a strong bulwark of righteousness in church and 
state. Wherever such as these have been found, others have 
lived who have been quickened by their spirit, cheered and 
guided by their words, and stimulated by their example. We 
need not go back to Plymouth Rock for them ; they cannot 
be imprisoned in any epoch, shut in any historic period ; they 
have been here in this ancient town during all the antecedent 
years, and they are with us still. The founders of these early 



H3 

churches, and their successors in the line of great faith and 
work, have this notable peculiarity in common with all divinely 
commissioned forces, that they are perennial ; they project 
themselves, with the might of a great purpose, into subsequent 
times — into church, into states, into strifes, revolutions, 
rebellions, civil tumults and distractions — that by the faith 
and wise endeavor of believing men a more perfect common- 
wealth may ensue. This spirit permeates society today, 
extending far outside and beyond the limits of ecclesiastical 
communion; finding its early type — a type which is perma- 
nent — in the first Puritan captain of New England, concern- 
ing whom the historian Bancroft writes in his account of the 
colony at Plymouth : " Standish, a man of the greatest courage, 
the devoted friend of the church, which he never joined, was 
appointed to the chief command." 

In no respect is the Puritan more revealed than in his care 
and his zeal that the great utilities of life — the home, the 
church, the state — shall be served and conserved. Besides 
this as main purpose all others are secondary and subordinate. 
The intent, the resolve, is all ; or, as the stern Puritan Crom- 
well declared, " The state, in choosing men to serve it, takes 
no notice of their opinions. If they be willing faithfully to 
serve it, that satisfies." How well these words fit the earlier 
and the later days of the republic, all students of history know. 
The ancient struggles in which church and state were born, 
the tempests they have encountered in their progress, present 
these as constant revelations, that wherever and whenever 
there is need, there is the man, the Puritan heart, the Puritan 
spirit, to meet that need. 

In those recent days of tremendous strife that shook the 
land, when from Atlantic shore to farthest Oregon, from 
Canada to the Gulf, the nation rose in the majesty of its 
mighty life to meet the threatening assault with one heart and 
one mind, these churches, in common with the other churches 
of the land, gave of their best, the sons and brothers, while 
mothers, wives, and sisters prayed and worked in a like patri- 
otic devotion. And whether it was Sherwin leading the 



ii 4 

charge at Gettysburg, or Taft and Guild fronting the foe, or 
Carroll bleeding his life away at Hull Run — from whence 
the record shall ever be " Dead upon the field of honor; " or 
Van Brunt, dauntless veteran of the sea, sailing in command 
of his new ship, the beautiful " Minnesota," right into the teeth 
of battle with the fateful " Merrimac " at Hampton Roads, 
and getting aground in the action, as the night fell and the 
retired, his officers, aware of the desperate situation if 
with the morning the enemy should return, all joining in 
petition to him to surrender and thus prevent useless waste of 
life, he replying, "Gentlemen, it is a proper petition and prop- 
erly tendered, but I have been put in charge of this good ship 
by my country, and I'll fight that craft as long as a plank is 
under my feet;" — in all these and thousands more of hero- 
isms and sacrifices, we recognize and give thanks for the 
permanent constancy, the energetic guidance of the Puritan 
spirit. 

I have thought, from what I have heard here today, reviving 
a little what I was informed of years ago, that there had been 
once upon a time a sort of a quarrel or division among those 
who ought to be brethren — nay, who are brethren, not- 
withstanding real or seeming divisions — in all the great 
essentials of human life and conduct. If, indeed, there has 
been friction in the past, the rancor and heart-burnings of 
"hurt minds," whose work and devotion were one, though 
their vision was divergent, it is difficult to revive them now in 
the cheering auguries of this happy time. The ghost of a 
quarrel is not always of easy resurrection ; it flees the light of 
days like these. Let us remember that the great and grand 
things of Puritanism are here; that they are here to stay; 
that the strife, the division, all the "weak things " of man, 
pass away and are no more, but love and mercy abide forever, 
and good deeds never die. " The animosities are mortal, but 
the humanities — the humanities — live forever." No ancient, 
antecedent strife can perpetuate itself; it is a part of the 
order of the dying world. The kingdom of God will take care 
of its own. 



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